Alex and I indulged in our first endurance karting event at F1 Boston tonight. We went in knowing that the track was new to us, the format was new to us, and that we're not 22 and 140 pounds anymore. We knew it was going to be a tough one.
What we didn't know was that the connector area between the "city" and "country" courses when they are combined for longer events is outdoors. In the rain. Exposed to the elements. And tonight we saw some rain. About 50 laps into the race, suddenly it became a different race. Different braking points, different lines through the corners, quite a few places with no steering control whatsoever. Lots of spinning and a fair amount of people binning their karts into the barriers.
In short, it was an absolute blast.
I went out for qualifying on this new-to-us track layout but forgot that I could come back in and get Alex a few familiarity laps. So he started the race bravely and wholly unprepared. He did great working to try to hold our spot for 20 laps. My next 20 laps were more of the same but we started to get some pace from our little dog of a kart. Many karts did sail by us leading us to wonder if the setup was that much different or whether we need far more practice. Of course it was mostly the latter with a bit of the former to make us feel better.
But then it rained. Holy crap. Going into a turn on a track on slicks in the wet takes some mighty cojones. You just have no idea if you are going to make it. One bump from behind by another kart and you're done. Even worse, just a bit too much throttle and around you go. A bit too much brake and same thing. Early braking and late apexing along with super-slow cornering became the norm. Steering was mostly accomplished with a little boot of gas to kick the back around a bit. Too much and you were headed the wrong way home. It was awesome!! All I could think of was Senna at Donnington in 1993. Not that Alex and I looked anything like that. But did we ever have fun trying to figure out a whole new race in the middle of our race!
It was not a clean race by any stretch. Penalties abounded. But no major yellow flags in the race really. Maybe one.
We did one extra pit stop and weren't exactly on pace with the lead cars. Ok, we finished dead last. But it was step one in knowing what we didn't know and trying something quite new to us. And if that isn't living, I don't know what is.
To me, it was the greatest race.........in the world.
