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

It would be tempting to do a full turn by turn summary of the go-carting but I think some may find that too much. So here’s the short version. I started in the cart, and we started in the sequence of the training times. I started 4th, if I remember right Roland Jäckel was first, then Mike Drew, then Kjetil, then me. Go! After one lap I was 2nd after Roland, approx. 10 meters behind, I couldn’t catch him, and he couldn’t shake me either. After 15 minutes Janne took over, and as it turned out, he was one of the fastest in that group. I had had fastest lap in the first session, and we were second. But Janne was faster than the others in that group, and when he came in we were 1st! My turn, we had a good lead, and if I didn’t do something foolish we would win. So my aim was to keep it on the tarmac, not do fastest laps, and indeed my best time was beaten by Mike and Kjetil. I did spin once, with a little nudge from the friendly Kjetil, but got back on track immediately, so no disaster. Then it was Janne’s turn, we had about a 15 seconds gap, enough to win going steady, but maybe not enough to make a mistake. Janne drove beautifully, though he later told me he didn’t know we were winning. In the end we had a gap of 9 seconds, and were declared winners.

Now how do you behave after winning? Gracefully or bragging like hell? In the bigger scheme of things this victory means very little, but for bragging rights, we couldn’t have beaten a better bunch of people. So when we received our 50 cents medals we did a small victory dance of course. At the evening dinner Janne and I agreed to wear our medals. Strangely nobody offered us a victory beer.

In the coming days a lot of people came up to me and asked how I did it. “Mikael, how did you win, what’s the magic you used, please tell us?!” Here’s the secret. There’s an old saying in racing: “To Finish First, First you have to Finish”. My version is: “To Finish First, First you have to team up with a Finnish guy”

There was also a Europe/US competition. And the Americans were declared winners! How can that be? Europe was first and second, US third. So how could US win the continent competition? Apparently US came 3rd, 4th and 5th, and Europe 6th. So with a lot of creativity it was decided that the continent competition should be based on exactly the first five places. And that 3rd, 4th and 5th should count just as much a 1st and 2nd. I don’t think that in the history of sports there has ever been a situation where the number 3, 4 and 5 placed teams were declared winners against the 1st, 2nd and 6th placed. Well it was soon the 4th of July, guess they needed some encouragement, and let’s not forget that in the fight for Freedom and Democracy around the globe, we Europeans often take a back seat and let the Americans do the hard work, so I guess we owe them. So congratulations USA, good driving and creative thinking . Competition between friends is great.

OK, I could of course write about go-carting forever, and I know you want to hear more, but I’ll stop here.