Reply to "Le Mans Classic, as I remember it..."

The next day we went to a nice outdoor go-carting track. I had written in the massive email stream that goes on among the participants in the days up to leaving for the trip, maybe unwisely, that the others should be aware that, though I hadn’t go-carted more than maybe 10 times, I had never finished worse than 2nd or bent some ribs trying. Just to stir up the pot, to get the excitement going. Since go-carting for me has mostly been company events where the competition had been secretaries and fat bosses, my result list should be put in perspective perhaps. Now I was to compete against people who were used to performance cars and racing at least on an amateur level, and from what I could hear of conversations before the start, quite competitive. For me winning was not important, the important thing was that we were together, that we had fun, and that nobody should get hurt. Yeah right!

We were 34 to race, 17 teams and an hour endurance, 2x15 minutes each (and some practice first). Since my wife didn’t drive, I had to find a team mate. I teamed up with the strong Finn Janne, and that was a good choice. Without offending Janne, he is a big guy and that is not always an advantage in these low powered go-carts, but as we all know, Finns can rally and F1, and apparently also go-carting.