.604 seconds in the first qualifier.432 seconds in the first race
Fastest time in the world for the day in the 2nd race
.552 seconds in the 3rd race
.425 seconds in the final main
Those my friends is what separates you from winning a heat in this bloody competitive world indoor kart racing. Every field in every race was separated by less than 1 second from the slowest fast guy to the fastest for over 55 minutes on the long tracks and 1 ½ hours in the final. The atmosphere is almost what I would describe as a world championship 15 round feather weight boxing match with dizzing flashes going off all the time both on and off the track from the media presence and fans cheering you on through each battle. Worldkart Flanders was our home for several days and you really got to know Analees (race coordinator) who hunted you down to make sure you didn’t miss your race call or driver meeting… or Christoff (charismatic race director) who was more like a father figure to you then a referee, you did as you were told or else!...plus untold waitresses that helped quench your thirst with a ridiculously priced large bottle of water made from the heaviest glass in the world whilst attempting to charm them so you could get more than the 1 token piece of ice cube in your cup, for Christ sake you would say, it was raining cats and dogs they can’t be having a water problem! Food wise though I have to say they do serve a mean spaghetti (really helped that I whoofed down a whole plate just in time for my weigh in…the Belgiums took note and where extremely jealous). And then the poor hunched back gentleman who ran the final lollipop of every race, kept his mindful watch on you without missing a beat. There was the guy who drove the double flagged pace kart with full communication gear in every race that almost always forced you to driver at negative miles per hour for 2 or 3 bloody laps…never spent so much time avoiding collisions and spinouts in my entire karting career like Worldkarts. And finally the corner workers who could see your eyes and for the most part really did not tolerate any shenanigans on track, you always knew when they were watching you and the furrowed black flag hung menacingly from their penetrating looks for laps at time.
The whole place is like a 70’s / 80’s night club, huge warehouse that you need serious GPS to find…because of construction going on in town, the first 2 nights my hotel was literally almost walking distance from the track, just had to walk across a bridge on a water way that separated the two but in order to drive there it took 20 minutes (not kidding!!) and in both directions you had to get on a freeway going the wrong way so that you could turn around and go the other way because there was just no way to go the right way (crazy!) The warehouse could have easily been a discotheque with old school music, strong Belgium beer and old Belgium ladies blowing huge billows of fresh tobacco right into your face as you come off the track gasping for fresh air…that part really sucked and probably has taken a few years off my life.
The karts are nothing short of mini-formula 1 versions of indoor karting…I spent a lot of time analyzing the way they are constructed without using a single piece of aluminum or steel tubing….just a very expensive looking carbon fiber sled that meant two things…the karts are never bent and they are extremely light. They must flex with amazing accuracy too…they felt that way around corners. You had to say they almost drover clinically since it was not the karts inefficiencies you were after…it was your own un-perfect driving that needed correcting. The other feature is that since they used super duper grippy Dunlop tires and the track was made of finely smoothed over asphalt combined with years of sticky rubber made it incredibly easy to lift your fellow karter and potentially flip them over if you bumped them too hard from behind or entering a corner. Due to the formula 1 like g’s in the tight turns, the rear axle would just pop right up because the grip was so high. So if you can imagine you have to driver insanely close to your competitor and yet not hit bump them too hard cause it would send them flying in the plane view of everyone and especially the track marshalls waiting to give you an orange stop and go penalty…no leniency on that whatsoever. So you had your brake foot trigger happy anytime you were in the hunt of a pack. Next you had those wonderful launch barriers in every goddam corner of the track…you really learn to respect those things. For me in the bridge section I came around too hot got about a foot up in the air and nailed the wall so hard it rearranged the organs in my body after landing…never did that again. The last and probably most unfair aspect of the karts for skinny guys is the wideness of the seats with almost no side support…almost every single Belgium driver had their very own Tillet private seat…and I am not talking about inserts, I mean the actual kart seats that coupled with a bit of padding would give you incredible lateral support…trust me I begged and pleaded and got Blue Star’s angel driver Justine to lend me hers for most of the races, otherwise I would still be in a hospital in Belgium trying to recover from muscle hernia’s from just trying to hold on to the damn things.
The start of every race was a big spectacle of intimidation and religious fanaticism for the blessed gods of karting to bestow a good kart on you during kart draw. The look on people’s faces was extreme before the draw and even more dramatic afterwards. I liked the new rules of not allowing you to have the same kart twice throughout the entire event…if you got lucky and scored a fast kart it was both good and bad, good cause you would do well but bad because you knew you would never get that kart again, even in the main!
The first race of the entire event was the nation’s cup race and I really got excited when Mike told me that Werner Truegler had asked to be on our team…I almost fell out of my seat. I didn’t care about the race until that moment and then had some wild crazy idea that perhaps we could actually win the damn thing…well as you all well know, we didn’t due to some rogue Brazilian driver that felt his right foot should never leave the fully planted position even after pushing our guy 10 feet into a barrier and consequently putting us a lap down from the get go. I will always remember this, the first aborted start of the nations cup endurance race was uncannily similar to the famous F1 race in Spa in the rain a few years back, you know the one that is on you tube and has a 16 car crash derby on the opening lap with parts flying in every direction well image the same thing in and indoor karting facility…it was mayhem and I was standing right in front of it with a camera…what a site that was. So that is how things started and believe it or not that was the only major hiccup the entire time we were there. Big kudos to the Worldkart’s guys for running a heck of a good show.
As far as my particular races well I have to start by saying that it was an incredibly weird experience start with; imagine you are driving up to the departure terminal at Tom Bradley and have an earthquake hit just as you were getting ready to stop by the curb to drop off the bags…bizarre thing to kick off my trip that way and the funny part was that I had no clue how big or how bad the damage was until almost 4 days afterwards cause I could not understand a thing the news channels were saying about it in Belgium….doooh! Secondly I find out that the day before Lufthansa decides to have a labor strike and they are diverting all the flights into Germany…great! For some reason we were not affected..luckily.
Let’s start with the nations cup, for me that was the worst race I had severe jet lag and could only sleep like 45 minutes during the night before not to mention the broken air conditioning in our room during what I can only describe as monsoon season in Belgium….imagine the same heat as Phoenix but with Louisiana style humidity…practicing and racing in these first few days was insane…we all basically put our suits aside and practiced in shorts and t shirts. For me once we had gone so far down in the standings as to not make it viable for a podium I just got in, did my stint and prayed for the end to come as my lack of sleep made me drive like I was drunk…not fun. Plus I had to immediately jump out of the kart, throw on some clothes race to a different airport in Belgium than the one we had flown into and race to catch a plan to Budapest…met with my brother family who have not seen in 2 years and had a very nice dinner and then out with my bro until 4:30 in the morning reveling in the Hungarian night life….crazy and in retrospect will never do ever again!
Anyway, fast forward to Monday for practice, drivers meeting and individual qualifying in the fast karts. Had a blast meeting the young British drivers and getting to know the Italians who barely spoke English but we somehow managed to carry on big dialogues, very funny guys, also the one guy from Japan was really a great guy he gave me a present for Sophie and didn’t even know that she was part Japanese, he thought that was really cool. Hanging out with Team Blue Star was the best part of being in Belgium, in hindsight having spent so much time with Gregory and knowing he is world champion is a really great experience, plus all the guys like Steve To, Nico, Timothy, Justine they are all such great and friendly people. Also for the team championship Mike and I were courted by Sebastian Crickens to take on one of the Dutch hot shoes Jerone, who was the coolest kid, did really well in his races and represented our team in the light classes with honor. Part of the going to these events that I like so much is the meeting of all these folks from around the globe, it’s fascinating to know that they share the same passion we do for our sport and we can spend hours talking about it in different tongues and not even notice. Great stuff! After the weigh in we were told that the original rules of weight classes would stay since the natural division was about 50/50…that meant I would be in heavy and not light like I had planned….in hindsight I am very relieve that happened…the light class was mainly full of young kids and I had no business being in that class, thank god!
All throughout the time were were there, as the two American teams it really was a solidarity around our small group…Mike Smith, fast as hell and my teammate, as always a gentlemen and this time he was totally going out of his mind with helping run the damn thing…what was he thinking! He really makes racing a truly enjoyable experience. James Romero whom I had talked to over the phone for months but never met was a really cool guy to hang out with. He was always cheering and pitting for the other drivers, class act guy with a great temperament and funny jokes to help take the edge off…plus one fast racer, no doubt. Got to spend time getting to know Dan Burke and the Godfrey’s both son and dad was actually very similar to my dad being there for me so that was cool. Zak…well what can I say about him other than we actually had a few laughs and once again he proved that obeying the rules is really not one of his strengths…poor guy, in reality I think he means well just has a tough time with the pressures from his dad. Anyway, we all supported each other whenever we could, a lot of our races were in the same group so it was tough but we always had someone giving guidance from the pits and cheering our small teams on.
During my nations cup race I tried to use my timing system and I was so sleep deprived that I had actually mounted the beacon sideways…no wonder it was giving off weird readings…well I caught that on Monday and now my timing system was working like a charm…only guy out there with that advantage…investment paid off in huge dividends. After some guys got world of it, it pretty much ran almost in every heat within our close friends like James and a Spanish fellow from Belgium.
Qualifying was mostly uneventful for me, drew and decent kart #2 and qualified mid pack, right behind my soon to be nemesis (masters winner) Pablo from Argentina. He was going to be hard to battle is what I thought since he was fast and extremely consistent. Turns out we are both 40 and the youngest of the masters..figures right? Anyway I was good to go and ready for battle. Temperatures were finally going to drop that night with big rain expected that night.
First race:
Luck was on my side (only for a while) as I drew kart #1 in my first heat. The Belgium Robens in my group turned to me and said “you lucky bastard!”…well turns out it was a rocket of a kart, not in a dromo sort of a way or even in the kart #7 at Phoenix sort of a way but rather in more of a 1/100th sort of a way with solid torque coming out of the corners. My race was last on the roster so tons of waiting around anxiously for the race to start. We were running backwards on a short track for this first race…I did not have that much experience going this way but I had qualified the day before well enough to worst case scenario, just hold my position (would have been really nice but NOT!) I made the lethal mistake, not having experienced the start of the race in the nations cup to make an attempt to pull out of the nose to tail pack to try to overtake for 5th and instead when the pass failed I had a Nascar train of karts pass me in one curve putting me back to like 11th or 12th. I then got held up and decided it was good time to pit….what a disaster that was. The whole point of these shorter ½ races on short tracks was to stay in the pack, gain the advantage of the blue flags and strategically wait to pit in the later part of the race when it made more sense. Then I spent the rest of the race behind an asshole driver from the Hungarian team that pretty much decided that he would not let anyone get around him even when the black flag was eminent. He ended up spinning out a lapper and I got around both of them but by then the damage was done and I could not recover any more positions. That was my first race, great kart selection, big mistake in the start, bigger mistake in pulling off to go do my pit stop and a disappointing 10th with what should have been a solid top 5 finish…oh well, you live and you learn and and you kick your ass into high gear and get down to business for the next one.
2nd Race:
The gods of karting were shinning on me with the selection of kart #26, it was such a good horse it really handled great, torqued out of the corners and had the equivalent of what I would call top end punch. My race again was at the end of the roster so more waiting. This was the only race where you would not qualify prior to but instead would start in the position your best time was in the previous race…for me having had kart #1 put me in solid shape starting in 6th with a great kart. Boy did I learn my lesson I stayed neatly in that pack until about ¾ of the race as we were coming up on lap traffic I jumped into the pits and made a solid lunge for 3rd place…lost that to the leader who had enough of a gap to pit and come out ahead putting me in 4th and then one of the fast star Belgium guys made a heroic pass on me with only like 10 laps to go…I almost got him back but it was in those wanning laps that I did that was one of the proudest moments for me in this event…set fastest lap of the night not to be broken by and of the other heavy drivers…my time was so fast that it was even competitive with the light classes having 40 pounds more than them! That ½ point you get for fastest lap sometimes can mean the difference in qualifying for the final so I took it with full honors and went to bed that night feeling pretty good about myself.
3rd Race:
First of the full 1hour races…weather was still cooler but again the tossing and turning from the excitement of the day before plus one fussy baby in an un-airconditioned room made for less than optimal racing conditioning of my body. My race would be in the morning 2nd up for the group and that meant my muscles form the night before were not quite up to racing that early in the morning. Can you believe I actually drew kart #1 again! I mean what are the chances...well of course I had to redraw and then I drew kart #8, which is my favorite race number and whether or not the kart was good, it didn’t matter, I figured it would be fast and I drove it accordingly. I qualified poorly in 9th, whilst Mike Smith qualified behind me, he had a rough go with a crappy kart in this race. I kept to my strategy and drove a strategically perfect race gaining two positions yet having a slower time than many a guy behind me. I felt okay about the performance in that race knowing that if I had a better kart I would have been even higher in the standings. By now the results of the Masters division had not been posted yet and I was a bit nervous as to my standings…then the results came out and Pablo and I were on top 1 and 2 with 6 points separating us…close enough for the kill, I thought. Now on the other hand I had been hovering around 24th in the championship and then 20th after this race…I went to Werner and asked him what my chances were of getting into the final and he said I was really 50/50 based on the guys behind me, I had to do better than them in order to guarantee a spot. It was devastatingly nervous energy I felt because I had been in that exact same spot in Phoenix the year before only to be demoralized by not making the final…but I was determined and all I needed was some luck in the karts to not run out and get good rest for the night. Time to seriously meditate and think like Senna is all I could do…what would he do in this circumstances…heck what would Patrick Long or Casey Rising do…all those thoughts were swirling around in my head all night long but after a while it was not bothering me anymore, instead it was giving me some sort of inner strength, very strange phenomenon.
4th Race:
Wake up this morning feeling like something big was going to happen that day. Had my usual breakfast downstairs next to the entire Belgium Talent Promotions teams, yeah go figure I would pick the same hotel as the top guys…no one else, just me and all 14 of them. Provided for some fun humour in the morning…something to take of the edge I thought. This time I drew kart #10 and my race was around noon…the day was hotter and humid again. I was lucky to not have to race in the afternoon when the heat was crazy again. Kart #10 turned out to be a pretty decent kart and again, not only do you need luck but you really need to race with a solid strategy on this track, where passing is a premium and hard to come by. Well this time we would be racing on the slower A&D karts…I called them the trucks since the steering was at a weird angle making them so hard to steer. The strain on your arms was enormous…but fortunately all those days I drove out to California Speedway and did 1 hour long stints in the 95+ degree weather really paid off on this day. Plus I was finally getting off the jet lag and really getting better sleep at night. I qualified in 7th and my masters nemesis Pablo qualified poorly….a great chance to make up the deficit so I drove harder than I drove in any other race. One great moment for me was following a pack closely in the opening round that I could tell was going to be trouble…so I hung back waiting for the right moment to pounce…then the lead guy went wide the other two guys tried to go around him on both sides…one hit the lead guy sending that guy into the other and the net result was that in 1 full swoop I passed three guys right on the front straight in plane view of the crowd, it was epic! I finished a solid 5th in this race and was hoping Pablo had finished in the back but I only made up three points narrowing the gap to 3.5 points for the masters championship. More importantly with my 5th place finish I new I had a good chance of making the final which was my main objective this year. With unabated breath and tons of anxiety I asked Werner who was doing the points calc if I made the final and he screamed “you made it!” and gave me a welcoming high five….I was so happy, my 2 agonizing years of missing the final especially in 2007 by a three way tie for 26th was now going to be behind me and I was going to race with the best for 1 ½ hours….I thought to myself…yikes!!!! Honestly it was a real emotional moment for me, all that effort you put in to training and practicing and psyching yourself up for the event plus the time and money was all finally worth it…I had made the final 20…very surreal and the highlight of my trip for sure.
Final Race
This race believe it or not was not the glorious final cap to a dramatic build-up that I would have hoped for but it didn’t matter…I had made the final. Just being around the media fan fare and knowing that I was going to be called up for that final drivers meeting was so cool. There is something magical about getting that final day to race amongst your peers who all are there to watch you put on the final show…it was unforgettable in that way. Plus you spend a tremendous amount of time waiting for your qualifying and then waiting for your race…it is a test of nerves as much as it is a test of your endurance and skill. Unfortunately for the masters championship being that there were 20 of us and the points system as the same as the 15 field races, I would have to finish in 8th and Pablo would have to finish in 12th or worst for me to capture the world championship…against a field of previous world champions and runner ups and a field of super elite Belgium drivers, well I was thinking at this point that a miracle would have to happen for me to get that opportunity, realistically. Could it have happened with a good kart….most definitely yes but my luck with karts had been so solid with only 1 exception that I figured it would be tough on the luck level….well I guessed that one correctly and drew a so-so kart for the final…#21. I had a fleeting moment during qualifying because I got paired up with Pablo and could keep his pace but that just goes to show you how perceptions at the worlds can be so deceiving. I was only .233 seconds off of his time and that put me 6 positions away from him in the start…he started 10th and I started 16th! I could see the disappointment in the faces of my friends and family, but I knew that all I could do was try to hold out and see if something would happen…the rest of the field all went crazy diving into the pits hoping to get a replacement kart…the only problem is that the replacements were all dogs too. I am really happy in retrospect that I didn’t swap karts….it would only have made the race that much more irritable. Instead I hunkered down and did my best with what I had. Whenever the leaders would pass me I would try as hard as I could to stay with them…it was more of a challenge to do that then it was really racing against anyone in particular and that is what kept me going for the grueling 1 ½ hours….funny thing is that your body is not prepared to handle that extra ½ hour physically it really is incremental in an exponential way…by the end I could barely hold the steering wheel with blisters forming in my palms and a huge hot spot had built up on my left hip…no to mention your neck felt like it was ready to snap….once you saw that checkered flag you were so relieved, it was almost as good as sex. Pablo only finished 2 positions ahead of me, I had outlasted some and passed some others but had gotten passed by the same to end up exactly where I had started…in 16th. It was bitter sweet but in the end I knew inside myself that I had done my best against the best and that was all that mattered. I had come very close to being masters world champion and in one race had been fastest of the day against the world champions…not bad really and that is how my experience at this years IKWC in Belgium felt like…priceless.
As a team Mike, Jerone and I took 6th place, Go Fast Energy took 9th, not bad considering there are 28 teams and we narrowly edged out some past world champion teams, that was cool too.
But for me, as I stood on that podium and took one breath and looked around at all those faces smiling and cheering as well as all those cameras flashing and took it all in for a few seconds time stood still and then it was over. That’s how it is in racing and that is why we keep trying to do it again and again…to savor moments like that, its thrilling…its life…in the immortal words of Steve McQueen,”…everything else is just waiting around”
