This was our machine. The kart #17.
Five people from the SAPASSELO team: Silvestre, Luís, Teles, Artur [me], and Miguel [on the kart].
Artur [me], waving to the camera :)
Despite not having a racing uniform, we showed up wearing SAPASSELO t-shirts.
Luís, [half] viewed from the circuit's tower.
Teresa [aka Bé], one of our female racers... faster than most men :)
Silvestre, receiving the checkered flag and giving the crowd a positive thumb!
click on a picture on your left, to view a full size version of it.
Yesterday I was in a 6 hours kart race, and that is why I didn't update the site. Today I am back, but I am physically *very* tired, so expect a slow paced review of the race and nothing more :)
Ok, so the race was the 1st NERSANT / SICAL KART GP, held @ the kartodrome of Abrantes. Karts were 270 cc / 4 stroke machines, randomly attributed to the teams. It was a 6 hours race with 210 participants, distributed in 21 teams. I raced for SAPASSELO, a great tire trading company, which was present thanks to a CONTINENTAL sponsorship.
SAPASSELO was, for sure!, the most amateur team on the event. We didn't agree on any tactics, we didn't meet before the race, and we all appeared wearing jeans and t-shirts... Most of the other teams were wearing competition suits, running with a strategy, and only with selected people.
SAPASSELO participants were:
for the practice and qualifying sessions, in order of appearance: Miguel, Teresa [aka Bé], Silvestre, Artur [me], Teles and Silvestre. We believe that Teles achieved the team's best qualifying time on lap 36 with an impressive 44.xxx [can't really remember] that gave us the 4th place for the grid!! Very impressive indeed for a bunch of amateurs :)
It must be stressed that Teles was the ONLY person on the team - including the people who would only show up for the race - to have tested a 270 cc kart... and most of us had never, ever, raced on karts at all...
SAPASSELO was also the ONLY team with 2 female drivers (Teresa and Sara).
During the race our lineup was: Silvestre, Sara, Artur [me], Luís, Teresa [aka Bé], Luís [aka Alentejano], Zé, Paulo, Sérgio, Teles, Luís, Artur [me], Silvestre.
During my racing turns, I did superb and horrible things: I drove almost one hour straight, during my first turn, recovering from 14th to the 6th place! And then, when we were about to refuel and I was to give the kart to Luís, I didn't respect the speed limit on the pits [not on purpose - I was kind of hot :)] and that costed us 30 long seconds... Check the penalty mpeg video where you can watch my obvious overspeeding... There is also another video of my finest hour, overtaking & overtaking...
The winner team was GERCAR, where you could find racers such as Santinho Mendes, a regular participant [and winner] on FIA's off-road world cup! SAPASSELO came 11th, and that is brilliant, considering the many pitstops, the penalty, and the extreme inexperience of some of our drivers :)
After the race, there was a kind of boring and badly organized ceremony, where the main organizers and the Abrantes' local president [which, some years ago was my high school philosophy teacher] said some nice words without any audio hardware... so very few did listen him.
OK, so the available kart high quality mpeg videos are:
30 seconds penalty due to this excess of me [958 KB]
a complete lap of mine with one overtaking maneuver and lots of fun :) [7180 KB]
These videos are also available from the video section.