PAN GLOBAL RACE Round 5 – WELL DONE!

Bro – thanks for this.

I was indeed pleasantly happy with the outcome of the race itself. 5 myKarters participated in the event: Azlan, Rizal, Tom, Henzee and myself. In fact, the winner Kelvin Lee also has joined myKART recently and will hopefully see him soon (ie tomorrow).

As usual, the event started with the time trials to determine the 10 who would qualify for the day’s final race. Each driver was given 12 laps to post a quick lap. Most of the top 10 qualified within a second of each other (50 secs+), except Tom Tan who dipped below 50secs over the shortened Kartquest track.

Most of the karts were quite closely matched, although there were exceptions as always. So my aim was to keep reducing my lap times by being smoother and smoother over each qualifying lap. 12 qualifying laps over the shortened track turned out to be quite a challenge as the karts were heavy and understeered too much for my liking. So a lot of forced needed to be applied to make the karts turn in. My best lap time was 7th overall with Tom being the fastest.

I made good progress in the race, capitalising on a good start and mistakes of others to creep up to 4th. I had managed to close in on Tom who was in 3rd (gap less than 1 sec), but could not get close enough to pass him before the chequered flag.

4 secs ahead of Tom I could see Henzee hassling Kelvin for many laps. They were both racing bumper to bumper. Henzee quicker in the twisty bits, whilst Kelvin would pull ahead on the straights. At one point Henzee even got ahead only to be re-passed by Kelvin. All credit to both of them for racing very closely but very fairly. Well done!

Aside to this, I spent some time talking to Alex about A1GP, the Panglobal event, Kartquest, and grassroots motorsports.

A1GP is quickly gathering momentum with a test session recently done with 15 countries involved. The Malaysian round will be on 20th November – which seems to be a date which clashes with at least two other major racing events in the region (Macau GP and Langkawi World Karting finals – which I believe is straight after).

As for Panglobal, they will still continue in 2006… but it is not yet clear what will be the format. Although I get the impression that Kartquest will still be linked with the series. And speaking of Kartquest, I am told that a new circuit would be built near to the current one – which will make way for some other development. Let’s hope they build the new one quick and that the layout is good.

On grassroots motorsport – we are aligned but the key is cooperation & alliance. This market is too small for many players.