
I haven't gotten around to writing blog posts lately but I am back on it.
Canada F1 Trip
So I did go to the Canadian Grand Prix and had an amazing time, the atmosphere of Montreal when there's a race is amazing; it truly uses it as an excuse to have the whole city become a huge party. There are events going on in the streets and performances everywhere, and the people there are so nice and giving. Truly a great experience, and the race didn't fail to excite either. I thought coming in that the Mercedes cars of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton were going to finish first and second like they always do, especially after seeing their performances during the Friday practice and Saturday qualifying, which had them even starting first and second for the race.
The good thing about it was that it was not a Mercedes domination, as Nico had an issue causing him to drop back and the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel took the lead in the opening laps of the 70 lap race. It was awesome to see a battle between the Mercedes of Hamilton and Vettel throughout the entire race, and while I wanted a Ferrari to win I did not leave disappointed when I saw Lewis win because it was an interesting race to watch. Truly felt different actually being at the track; you can see when someone is really pushing the car and the differences in the different teams setups. After the race, the track becomes a public park again as it usually is, so all the spectators got to walk around the circuit. I took some Formula One tire rubber and some curbing paint home as a souvenir.
The Karting Business
A ton of stuff happened in karting recently, but the recap of it is that after that gruesome NJMP weekend about seven or six weeks ago, I did not do any practices or races. That was until the Saturday of June 25th, which was a practice day in order to prepare for the upcoming club race at OVRP which would happen the following day of the weekend. There were a bunch of issues, the most notable being my braking technique, as I was overheating the brakes to the point where they would not function as they should. To add to that, we were running about 1,000 RPM down. This means that the engine was not running as it should, and that there was a significant loss of power. My team principal Stevan McAleer was at the track that day serving as a coach, and when the day ended with none of these issues being solved he came to the verdict that we shouldn't do the race on Sunday as the brakes would be a possible safety concern. So I didn't race.
I still did not get to do any good running, and six weeks is quite a long time to be out of the kart, so we scheduled two practice days with the team on June 30th (Thursday) and July 1st (Friday) to maybe get some proper running in. The day started off well on Thursday, and my braking technique was back in check and maybe even better than ever. But a problem still lingered with us, and that was the loss of the 1,000 RPM (it was almost always 1,300 in reality but it would always be at least 1,000 if not more) in the engine. My driving was very crisp and smooth, and my driver coach for the two days Stuart McAleer (brother of Stevan) mentioned how it was probably the best he's ever seen my driving. I managed to do a best of 36.88 seconds around Oakland Valley Race Park with this huge issue. After getting a ton of laps in that Thursday, I did even more on Friday but the tires gave out as they were getting more worn, and the weather was a bit colder resulting in my best for Friday being 37.12. I feel as though I could've driven a bit better but overall happy with the two days of practice I had.
I am hoping that this engine issue gets solved, but for now I have an onboard of my practice from Thursday on Youtube in which I got my best time of 36.88. It'll be on the multimedia page as well. But that's all for now, and be sure to check back from time to time as I will be posting more often!