European Karting Final Endurance – Vice Champion

In practice the team boss had already raised hopes, as my team-mate and I drove fast lap times and ended up in the top three. Before qualifying, our first kart was drawn, although we didn’t exactly draw the lucky lot. After 15 minutes I was only able to drive the fifth fastest time in the session. Nevertheless, I was confident to make up a few places at the start, but I didn’t manage to do so due to the narrow track. After a few laps the race got under way and a group of five teams quickly formed from 3rd place. According to the lap times I was able to drive faster, but we lacked the engine power to place the kart next to my opponent at the only overtaking opportunity or to outbreak him. Since I always lost a kart length to my front man on the long straight before this corner, I had to defend myself. It remained like that until the first window of the pit stop opened. When all the opponents in front of us immediately went into the pits, I used the clear track to drive out a positive time delta. In fact, one personal best time after another was set, which put us on 3rd place after our first exchange of drivers. My team-mate managed to break away from the chasing group and narrowed the gap to the second-placed team. When it was my turn again, I was able to secure second place for us just before the halftime. Due to all the duels before, however, we were already 17 seconds behind the leading team. After the karts were reallocated, we realised that we had to orient our race backwards by drawing a moderate karts again. So the second half of the race proved to be a tough challenge for us to defend second place. For 90 minutes we fought with the chasing team, with no more than one second separating us in each lap. The remaining two driver changes went perfect for us, so we were able to defend possible undercut or overcut strategies of the opponent. Finally, my team-mate drove the last stint and secured second place for our team.