Balloonatic Go Karting

Today saw the inaugural Balloon Sunrise vs Global Ballooning go kart challenge held at Ace Karts in Sunshine. The day began with rain, leading us to think we’d be down graded from Super Karts (9HP) to Modified Karts (6.5HP) as the track is open air. Fortunately, the skies were clearing, the rain had stopped and the track was dry when it came to our race.

Global had 9 racers and Balloon Sunrise managed to get 6 to the track (we had a couple of cancellations due to family issues). After completing our briefing, we donned helmets and jumped in our karts, heading out for a 10 minute qualifying period, then got arranged onto the starting grid based on our best laps. We were supposed to do a 15 minute race but there was a glitch in the computer so we got stopped, re-aligned on the grid in our present race order and then given a final 10 lap race, giving us about 18 minutes racing all up.

I spun out during qualification as I hit the brakes at the wrong time in a corner. I also spun out during the second 10 lap race as a bunch of us tried to get around one of the corners (that one got VERY messy :) Over all, I came 7th out of 15 which wasn’t bad, but was one place off gaining team points :(

We had agreed at the start that the first 6 drivers would win team points where first driver gets 10 points, second 8 and through to 5th getting 2 and 6th getting 1 point.

The end results after all the racing were:

So, a close race with lots of spins and hard racing. Lots of fun was had by all and we’ll be getting a trophy that the winning team can keep in their office for a year :)