Earlier this month, some of the members from BNI Hooton, a local networking group of which Engage Web is a part, went for a friendly karting session. Now, when I say ‘friendly’, there was obviously some competitive edge to it. Indeed, when the instructor stated there was to be no ‘bumping’, the question of ‘what constitutes bumping?’ was raised.
OK, that was raised by me – but you get the point.
One of the racers, Richard Jones from Wirral & Chester Tae Kwon-Do, even took his own crash helmet. Yes, he was that competitive.
We arrived at Hooton Park Race Circuit, just opposite the Vauxhall factory in Ellesmere Port, on one of those classic British summer days that had seen several inches of downpour. There was even a vote a few hours before the race on whether it should indeed go ahead. We unanimously decided it should.
After a short briefing where bravado and confidence was high, and humility was nonexistent, the drivers lined up for the first of two heats that would determine grid placements. There were 10 racers on the grid: Jonathan Davies, Mike Snelgrove, Paul Jones, Marc Halstead, Richard Jones, Wayne Taylor, Harry Taylor, Tom Hennessey, Darren Melvin and myself.
Having completed a lap of the Top Gear track in the reasonably priced Kia C Apostrophe D, and considering the car I drive on a daily basis, I was somewhat confident.
My confidence was very misplaced, especially when Richard Jones is a professional athlete, has motor racing experience and is dubbed ‘The Stig’ by the rest of the BNI Hooton team. I also came to regret my ‘Driving Miss Davies’ insult aimed at Jonathan Davies who, as I discovered, was a lot quicker than me around those bends.
Anyhow, it’s not the winning that counts – it’s the taking part. It was very wet, I think my car was a bit twitchy and I was concentrating too much on getting the best footage with the GoPro. There, that’s the racing driver excuses out of the way, now on with the summary.
Despite professional athlete/racing driver Richard and car dealer Wayne dominating the standings, everyone acquitted themselves well and improved their lap times from the initial heat to the main race considerably.
But all of this hyperbole from me isn’t what you came to read – you want to see the race. As we had a couple of GoPros attaches to drivers, a second camera at trackside and even a drone hovering around pre-race (but not during, for safety reasons), we managed to cut together this little clip of the whole affair.
Note the ‘no bumping’ rule was interpreted by some to mean ‘bumping is fine if you’re knocking them off the track’. Yes, that was me. Sorry Marc.
Next time we go – and there will be a next time – we’ll do more with the video. The rear-facing camera produced, by far, the best footage of the day and the front-facing cameras were too low for any great shots. For the next event, we’ll use helmet-mounted cameras and low down front-facing cameras in front of the cars to produce a much better video.
If you’d like something similar filmed and edited for your team-building day, do let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
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