After a few weeks off we head to the midlands for round 6 of the NKC 2025 championship, this time at Whilton Mill in Daventry. The weather continues to be kind as it was another hot and sunny weekend. Saturday was cloudy but still warm. So far we’ve not had a wet race this season.
Whilton Mill is a great track, it’s another drivers circuit. Friday practice was eventful as this is our first time there as a senior so our set-up information from last year wasn’t relevant. We spent every session changing the gearing, set-up and tyre pressures to find the best set-up possible. We found our ideal set-up and the kart felt great, and most importantly fast.
Saturday practice went well and we progressed through the day setting personal best lap-times in most of the sessions ready for our first race, being held on Saturday evening. We were at the top of the time-sheets throughout the day.
NKC is mixed grids which means there is no qualifying, we are all assigned our grid spots randomly. The finals are based on the points scored over the three races. Below is an overview of our race results:
RACE 1 – Started: 20th | Finished: 13th | Gained: 7 positions | Scored: 37pts
We had a good start, holding our position and started straight away picking off places. We had good pace, raced hard in such a big competitive grid and ended the race in 13th.
RACE 2 – Started: 6th | Finished: 4th | Gained: 2 positions | Scored: 46pts
After a great start, making up a position we raced hard to gain another place. After a close hard battle and the swap around of places throughout the race we finished heat two in 4th position.
RACE 3 – Started: 22nd | Finished: 18th | Gained: 4 positions | Scored: 32pts
Race 3 we made a great start making up several positions and throughout the race Jacob made over-take after over-take and made it up to 6th position. We had the perfect set-up, tyre pressures were spot on and the kart and driver were fast. The driver in 5th position was under pressure and started to make mistakes. Jacob wen’t for a move and the door was firmly closed pushing us onto the grass. All the hard work was un-done as we dropped down the grid to 24th with only 4 laps of the race left. Jacob pushed on, drove hard and made as many of the places back as he could, finally finishing in 18th. Not an ideal result but lessons were learn’t and it scored us enough points to make it straight into the A-Final.
A FINAL – Started: 22nd, Finished: DNF, scored: 34pts
We made it through to the A final for the third time in a row which is an amazing achievement in our first year of seniors with such high driver numbers, there are on-average 80 drivers in our category so it’s not an easy task. The final consists of 34 drivers and due to the points we’ve scored so far in the heats we started in 22nd.
Based on our previous races we were confident of a good result and thats where it all went wrong. The lights wen’t out and the race was on, karts wrestling for position on every part of the track. Just after Christmas corner (half way round the track) we were hit from behind, spinning us round so we are now facing the wrong way and then we got hit by two other karts, one of the driving completely over us ripping our radiator off resulting in us having no choice but to pull over a retire the kart.
This was not the result we were hoping for after a strong race weekend, but that’s racing. We’ve ordered all the replacement parts, the kart will be re-built and ready for action for the last round of the championship down in Dorset at Dunkswell Raceway.
