First Place!

Following on from last weeks success at Daytona Manchester and Jacob setting a new lap record the first time he's been in a kart for nearly 4 months, we decided to enter him into the Formula Bambino round 4.  Prior to being goalie extraordinaire for a local under 7's team, Jacob competed in each Formula Bambino rounds but his highest finishing position had been fourth, so not quite making it onto the podium.

There are two heats, each 15 minutes long, and the spectators don't get to see the times so you have to try and guage where your child is in relation to others when they are driving around the track to see if they are gaining or falling back.

Jacob had a really good first heat and lapped the other 3 drivers!  His second heat wasn't as good but he still kept pace.  The times from both heats are added together and then divided by two to get the average.

The hardest bit is waiting for the positions and names to be read out (in reverse order!) and when Tom read out the third place driver, I knew Jacob was on the podium!  So imagine my surprise when he came first!

Here he is on the podium with the other two drivers (apologies for the poor photo - I was shaking!)

And here he is with his trophy

And not only did he win the round and get his first ever karting trophy, he also broke the lap record (the one he set the week before!) again, knocking just over 1.3 seconds off!!

Samuel had a difficult weekend as it was his Championship too.  We ended up coming home early as his brake disc had shattered as the axel had moved.  So he was not a happy camper.  Wheras Jacob was boinging around!

It's My Birthday!

We took Jacob karting this morning to Daytona Manchester - he's not had a session for nearly 4 months and as football season has ended we thought we'd give it a whirl to see how he was after such a long break.

He was in the second of three sessions and set the fastest time in his session.  And for the day.  And it appears that he has set a new lap record too according to his time sheet!

He only managed 20 laps as he got hit quite hard by another driver who it appears (after reviewing the GoPro footage) did not brake when going into the hairpin and slammed into Jacob.  So much so that the chain came off Jacobs kart.  He was fine but rather indignant that he'd been hit!

If you are wondering why his times are a little erratic - he got stuck in traffic and has to wait for two sections on the track where the slower drivers are blue flagged and he can overtake them.  Laps 14 and 15 are almost identical - only 0.002 of a second split!

Quite a nice Birthday present for me!

Cabinet Is On Order!

Following on from his surprise podium finish a few weeks ago, Samuel, last Sunday, was presented with the second place Cadet Championship trophy from his indoor season at Daytona Manchester at the Festival race.

Basically, there were 11 rounds (each counted) and Samuel had 9 podium finishes and therefore 9 trophies.  He also collected points for each round and following the final race in November, he finished the season in second place overall in the Cadet class.

He also came third in the Festival race (there was a parents race too but we had a substitute - Tom!) and was presented with a trophy for that too!

Here he is after just receiving his second place 2012 Cadet Championship trophy - it is rather large!

 And with Tom (he came second in the 'Parents' race) - three trophies between them!

So yes, the trophy cabinet is on order and will be home to the 12 trophies from 2012! Samuel will be more or less karting exclusively outdoors during 2013 and hopefully, his form will continue!

You can see a video of one of the heats in the Festival race and read in more detail on the boys' karting blog HERE!

Number 9

I know that this is not a card so strictly I shouldn't be adding it to A Card A Day blog list, but it is something I've created!!  And I'm determined to blog every day in November and December, just so I know that I CAN do it!!!

Samuel won his 9th trophy of the year on Sunday at Daytona Manchester in the Cadet Inkart Championship.  He finished 3rd in the final race and therefore ended up on the podium and got a trophy!  There are 11 rounds across the Championship and November was the final round.  And he's come 2nd overall in the Championship too and he will be presented with the 2nd place trophy just before Christmas!

So here he is with his trophy - second from the right (the bigger boys are the Juniors!) 

 
He's the youngest on the photo by at least 2 years (he's only just turned 9) and he's the highest placed rookie in the Cadet Championship - 18 months ago he'd never even sat in a kart let alone competed!!

If you want to know a bit more about what he's doing and how he's doing along with Jacob, have a look at their karting blog! 

I promised him when he got his first trophy back in February that if he got 10 I'd buy a cabinet......... guess who's eating her words now?!!  Me and my big mouth!

Twitter

Just a little post to announce that the boys have been tweeted by Daytona Motorsport!!  Samuel and Jacob have their own karting blog (able assisted by me!) and Nick the General Manager at Daytona Manchester asked if he could tweet their blog address!

Here is the tweet link if you do tweeting - http://twitter.com/#!/DaytonaMSport

One rather proud Mum!

Oh, and the boys blog is http://samuelandjacobkartracing.blogspot.com there is a permanent link to what they are upto in my sidebar.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!!!

It was round 5 of the Inkart Championship at Daytona Manchester earlier today and Samuel won the Cadet class!!

Out of the three heats, he had two first places and a fifth place so he was placed first on the grid for the grand final.  And won!!

Here he is getting his trophy

And alongside the other winners Cadets and Juniors:

And with his trophy - its even bigger than the others he got from previous rounds!

Will add the photos to the boys karting blog along with the video of the final (once I manage to get it on youtube!

It's Happened Again!

It's the last Sunday of the month so its another round of the Inkart Championships at Daytona Manchester!  Three rather exciting qualifying rounds and Samuel again had a bit of bad luck in one of the rounds however he started again in the A final with a 4th place grid position and just like last month, he whipped round the second and third grid starters and straight into second place on the first corner!

He held his position for the full 20 laps and finished in second place!  He also broke his personal best time which previously was 26.01 seconds, so now he has a 25.90 second lap!

Here he is getting his second place trophy:

And on the podium with the other cadet drivers (they are the smaller ones!) and the junior drivers.  Samuel is second in the black suit on the left of the picture:

 And here he is with his trophy!  It is actually slightly different to the March race and also a bit bigger too!

And not to be outdone, Jacob has made it onto the Formula Bambino Power Lap standings with a 30.636 lap in the recent Formula Bambino round!  It's not his personal best time but still a cracking good time!

I think I'll sleep well tonight as it was a rather early start due to the Manchester Marathon and the roads being closed around Daytona Manchester!  Plus all the excitement!!

How Proud Am I?! (Again!)

Earlier today was the third round in the Daytona Manchester Inkart Championship - Samuel finished third in round two. He was 7th on the grid for the first qualifying session and unfortunately took a black flag so he ended up loosing the places he gained during the 10 lap race and finished eighth.

Second session he was first on the grid (all random placings to ensure all competitors have same advantage) and he kept the place throughout so maximum points.

For the final qualifying he was placed fourth on the grid and managed to retain the place. So then it just depended if he was in the A or B final. Luckily he'd scored enough points from the three rounds to be placed fourth on the grid for the A Final. So he was in with a good chance of a podium finish.

Samuel had a fantastic grid start and managed to get past the second and third placed drivers on the first corner after the grid as they had a bit of a tangle and Samuel neatly sidestepped them and was behind Saul (the eventual winner) to the point that he gave him a little nudge to let him know he was there around lap 3 or 4.

Saul normally races away and no-one catches him so he was rather surprised to see Samuel right up his rear and couldn't shake him off for the remainder of the 20 lap race!

Samuel finished in second place behind Saul with only 2 seconds difference (and he pulled a few faster laps than Saul too!) and he set his fastest lap time of 26.010 seconds - just over the magical 25 second barrier!

So we are more than pleased and Samuel has been bouncing off the walls since we got home! We think he has now moved up to third place in the overall points for the Cadet Championships and if he keeps this up, well, who knows?!

Here he is shaking Kevin's hand (who afterwards told me that Samuel had raced a perfect race - and he's only 8!)
The Cadet and Junior first, second and third place finishers - Samuel is nearest camera

And here he is with his trophy!! It actually comes upto just under his chin - you can't see it too well in the photo!
We thought he would be getting a kart trophy again like last time so we were really surprised when he was presented this huge cup!!

And the sun is shining - the boys have new super soaker water pistols so they've had a water fight and now they are watching the F1 Grand Prix...... who knows - it could be Samuel in 10 years!!

How Proud Am I??!!

Well, hope its worth waiting for!! The wonderful news I have is that Samuel, in his second ever championship came third!! He competed in the Inkart Championship at Daytona Manchester this morning and the age category is 8 to 11 (he is 8) and he came third in a field of 9 drivers!

Here he is receiving his trophy:

And on the podium

And here at home (he was shattered!)


And a close up of the trophy! His name was engraved on it before it was presented to him.

He had three 10 lap heats with random grid starts (like an Formula 1 race) where he had to either keep his position or gain places as this determined the number of points he got from the three heats. He was placed second overall going into the final race so started second on the grid.

He managed to loose two places with a bad racing line and then got one place back after he managed to get going quickly before the race was stopped after a rather nasty crash (one driver came off).

We think he is (after this round and the previous one in January) placed either 3rd or 4th in the Inkart Championship on points but won't know until the race report is published!

Not bad to say that he is probably the youngest driver in the class (cadets) and one of the least experienced!

Jacob is now fired up to do just as well in the Formula Bambino Championship in two weeks, and with his amazing time yesterday, he could do just as well as his bigger brother!