EasyKart UK - Round 1 - Whilton Mill, Northants

Easykart is go!

Superb opener to the season at Whilton Mill

As is usual on the evening after a day’s racing, my mobile phone was constantly humming with texts. One such asked how the opening round of the Easykart Championship had gone. I jabbed my reply into the Blackberry’s touch screen, ‘Lots of great action, drama and a little controversy - a perfect weekend’ and pressed ‘Send’.

It had been historic too. The event featured the inaugural Easykart Cadet race, won in fine style by James DeHavillande from Ronan McKenzie.

In the other classes, Barnaby Pittingale took an emotional Heavy victory, while there were wins for Patrick Lay in Junior and reigning Light champion, Terry Langley.

Nearly 100 drivers had signed on - an encouraging figure when you consider that this was divided between just four classes – albeit a smaller than expected grid had assembled for the inaugural Cadet race. Nevertheless, Birel’s Andy Cox and series promoter, John Vigor expect the fledgling class to rapidly expand once word gets out.

Postcard from Round 1

Cadet

With just two one thousandths of a second separating them after their epic pre-final, surely the Final couldn’t have been a repeat performance?

To the strains of Strauss’ ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, DeHavillande and McKenzie led the Cadets into the first corner. Carrying better speed through Oblivion before edging his rival wide through Crook, Ronan took the advantage over James. Almost immediately, they pulled away from the rest of the field, with Josh Grimston and Harrison Thomas leading the chase.

With two very different styles, the lead pair began to open the gap. Ronan hunched forwards, trying everything to find a tenth or even just a hundredth to help him pull away from James. The latter in contrast, sat upright but with relaxed shoulders, waiting for his moment. There was nothing between them - literally. By now, Thomas had broken clear of Grimston but was two seconds down on the leaders. Behind him, Grimston and William Stowell had become embroiled in a private battle for 4th.

Novice Jordan Sanders’ fantastic debut lasted just a handful of laps before his motor gave up but he should be happy with his qualifying and race performances. In his first ever race meeting, he had qualified 3rd fastest and finished 5th in the pre-final.

Another novice, Ross Kayman was earning his father - a stalwart of the Heavy grid - a ribbing from the starter, ‘Big Mick’. “Howard, he’s up to your pace already!” he noted before adding, “In fact, he’s faster than you!”

While there was laughter off track, things were getting serious on it. DeHavillande had begun his challenge for the lead. He started to tap McKenzie’s rear bumper just as they began to approach the back-markers. Ronan remained unflustered and continued to hold the advantage. But something had to give and as the pair closed on another tail-ender, James intelligently used this to his advantage. With Ronan going one way round the lapped kart, James darted to the other and had a clearer entry into the last corner and took the lead. Unruffled, Ronan instantly slotted onto James’ tail, but with his hands low on the steering wheel and that relaxed style still evident, it was clear that DeHavillande believed that he had it in the bag. Five laps later, he punched the air - justifiably delighted with a superbly taken victory. Harrison Thomas eventually took a lonely third, but valuable points to get his title challenge underway.

There were big smiles all round and James summed up his first taste of Easykart thus, “These have more bottom and mid-end. They’re nice to drive and the racing’s a lot fairer. (In other Cadet classes) you get a lot of rich people spending more in one race than we would all year in Easykart.”

Junior

Appropriately, the Juniors barrelled out of the dummy grid like school kids hearing the last bell of the day. However, Patrick Lay’s performance that it did much to explain why the word ‘dominant’ was invented.

Fastest in TQ, he won the pre-final and promptly repeated the exercise in the main final. Connor Hambleton followed him through the first corner from P3 to take up 2nd, ahead of Brad Fairhurst, Christopher Waldock and Tiernay Oliver.

Later on the brakes on the approach to Christmas Corner, Waldock briefly took 3rd spot, but as he struggled to get the power down and make it stick, Fairhurst benefited from the better line and simply took it back. Their squabble allowed Lay and Hambleton to ease away but Brad, Christopher and Tiernay were also breaking the tow of the chasing pack.

Although he wasn’t the fastest on the track, Lay profited by making fewer mistakes and began to open a handsome lead. Similarly, Waldock was to benefit from Oliver appearing to clash with the hard-pressing Jamie Cummings and William Lampitt, before slewing off the circuit and out of the race altogether.

With Lay up the road and Hambleton enjoying an equal cushion over the fight for 3rd, it fell to Fairhurst to provide the excitement. Clearly fired up, he was giving it full beans to wrest the last podium spot from Waldock. His persistence paid off and he deserved the trophy he would be given ten laps later.

At the midway point, Hambleton had looked like he was bridging the gap to Lay having halved the deficit to just seven tenths of a second. If the spectators were beginning to sense an exciting battle to the flag, they were to be ultimately disappointed. Patrick responded and within three laps restored his advantage to an unbeatable 1.5 seconds.

Waldock and Cummings diced to the flag, with the former settling matters in his favour.

Heavy

Firas Bilbeisi’s pole time at last year’s opening round (48.470) would only have been good for a 9th row starting position on the Heavy grid this time round. In fact, Kieran McCullough’s pole-setting time of 47.3 showed just how the field has developed, and even though the racesuits became distinctly tighter the further you walked down the pit-lane, both finals were run at a cracking pace – throughout the field.

William Smith triumphed in the pre-final, leading home McCullough, 2007 World Finals winner, Barnaby Pittingale and defending champion, Oli George.

Tragically, McCullough’s engine failed to fire prior to leaving the pits for the main final. His team worked furiously to find and cure the problem, but ran out of time. As the realisation sank in that he wasn’t going to make the start, he adopted the air of a man who’d just discovered Bernard Madoff was his bank manager.

Also out of luck was Brian Parias. As the field vied for position during the opening lap, he lost his nosecone at Christmas and toured back to the pits. “Oh, Brian!” his mechanic said before stalking back to the paddock.

At the front, Smith held the advantage as far as the Boot, where Pittingale out-manoeuvred him and took up the running. George slotted into third with ‘Sir’ Tim Hill – sporting chain mail-effect pod stickers - enjoying a good run in 4th place.

The lead quartet was running at such an incredible pace, that the pursuing pack simply could not match their speed and quickly lost ground. Not content with this, Pittingale and Smith were a further three tenths faster than George and Hill.

Pittingale’s style stood in stark contrast to that of Smith. Barnaby is renowned for smashing his kart over kerbs and flamboyantly hanging the tail out. I’ve said it before – it shouldn’t work but it does. Will’s manner couldn’t be more apposite. Smooth and precise, he first pegged Pittingale’s lead and then began to reduce it.

George though, had nothing extra in his locker, and was resigned to being a spectator as Smith gradually crept closer to Pittingale’s rear bumper. The Londoner made a rare mistake turning into the Boot. He yanked the wheel left and as the kart turned in violently and scrubbed off speed, Smith’s flowing style took him past in a trice. His lead lasted barely one corner. As they rocketed into the fast right-hander leading onto the start/finish straight, Pittingale was back ahead.

As they played cat and mouse, much of the field had split into disparate groups of differing abilities and speeds. As backmarkers were caught, some of the novices literally couldn’t get out of the way fast enough and momentary chaos ensued.

Some failed to pull over quickly enough, given the closing speed of the more experienced drivers. This would also affect the battle for the lead. As Pittingale and Smith hopped out of their seats in unison down the main straight, they too were carving their way through the traffic. On the last lap, they were locked together. Barnaby looked over his shoulder to see that he had no advantage over Will.

Beginning their descent to the waiting chequered flag, they found James Cockerham ahead of them. Both appeared to hesitate as they tried to work out where James would go, and in this moment Barnaby moved his kart to the right to block the only space available to Will. As Smith just managed to avoid running into the back of the hapless Cockerham, Pittingale sealed the win. An almost dispirited George crossed the line some 6 seconds down, with Hill a further two seconds back.

“My dad had a stroke back in January and I’d like to dedicate this win to him,” Barnaby said afterwards. “He’s always been a big inspiration to me, even more so now. The way he’s battling back is just fantastic and I wanted to give him something he could be proud of.” With Russ present to witness his son’s victory, Barnaby can rest assured that he did indeed, do his dad proud.

Light

The other senior class had also brought a large, quality-packed entry to the Northamptonshire circuit - and last year’s battle for supremacy between Terry Langley and Sam Smithson looked certain to pick up where it had left off last year. Langley took pole for the main Final by beating arch-rival Smithson and impressive newcomer Sam Massey in the pre-final. In close attendance were the ever fast Owen Jenman and Adrian Crockett, with Jack Sales - last year’s Junior runner-up - in 6th.

As Langley lead the way through the Crook and up the hill towards Christmas, a big crash in the mid-pack took several karts out of the running. Behind him ran a high-speed conga line of Smithson, Crockett, Massey, Alex Vincent (who had started from 9th) and reigning Junior Champion-turned Senior, Elliot Rice.

Smithson showed his hand early and took the lead on lap 5, whilst Langley held onto 2nd despite huge pressure from Crockett and Massey. As Crockett had a big look down Langley’s inside at Christmas, so Jack Sales was asking all the questions of Oliver Scullion as they fought for 7th.

Illustrating the ‘hard but fair’ nature of Easykart racing, Langley backed out of a move on Smithson on the entry into the Boot section after he almost ran into the back of the hard-braking leader.

To add to the tension, Sam was now catching the backmarkers, who would affect the outcome of this race. With the front-runners trying to pass in all directions, some of the novices transformed into mobile chicanes. Baulked by one, Terry was collected by the unsighted Adrian Crockett, who speared off the circuit and down the order.

Smithson retained his lead from Langley and Massey, now 3rd. Tipped beforehand as a possible title-contender, the talented Rice was beginning to show his true worth in 4th. A visibly furious Crockett was rocketing back into the top ten, while Richard ‘Diesel Dick’ Hudson was also hustling his way to an eventual 5th spot.

Pulling off a fabulous move, Massey surprised Langley for 2nd to pour petrol on what was already a sizzling race. He then briefly grabbed the lead but Smithson quickly reasserted himself. Undeterred Massey tried again and the pair clashed as Smithson appeared to spin and Massey, committed to his line, couldn’t avoid him. The pack reshuffled again, leaving Langley comfortably ahead with Rice finding himself in 2nd and Vincent 3rd.

Special mention must go to Sam Dimelow. After his own kart went down in the pre-final, he borrowed a spare for the main finald and despite it being wholly unfamiliar and not set up for a driver of his height, he dragged himself from last to 4th - only to be excluded for being underweight. He was baffled but took the penalty with good grace, saying of his Easykart debut, “The event was by far the best I have attended for a good 5 years”.

Results

Easykart Cadet

1st: James De Havillande
2nd: Ronan McKenzie
3rd: Harrison Thomas
4th: Josh Grimston
5th: William Stowell
6th: Aaron Oakes

Easykart Junior

1st: Patrick Lay
2nd: Connor Hambleton
3rd: Brad Fairhurst
4th: Christopher Waldock
5th: Jamie Cummings
6th: William Lampitt

Easykart Heavy

1st: Barnaby Pittingale
2nd: Will Smith
3rd: Oliver George
4th: Tim Hill
5th: Mark Lawrence
6th: Glen Beard

Easykart Light

1st: Terry Langley
2nd: Elliot Rice
3rd: Alex Vincent
4th: Oliver Scullion
5th: Richard Hudson
6th: Sam Massey