When the dust settled and the stench of burning rubber cleared one stood atop a chrome podium with a single finger raised in victory and his name was Jantz.
Twenty minutes and 32 laps around a 1700 foot track was all it took. When it was all said and done Jantz ended up winning by a mere .16 of a second. But it wasn't just first and second place that were seperated by the slimmest of margins; the time between first and sixth place was a little over a second.
Miramar Speed Circuit is an indoor kart track that sits hidden between strip malls, corporate office buildings and an Air Force base. On the outside it looks like a warehouse, but upon entering one is surprised to find arcade games, concession food and a sick twisty blue and yellow ringed kart track. The pulse immediately jumps up a couple beats per minute when you get your first glimpse of the first kart racing around the track at 40 mph. And the only thing you want to do is get behind the wheel and let it ride. Unfortunately for the man challengers, that was the last thing we could do. Mr. #1 was running late and so there we sat, ansy, talking strategy and gleaning information from the practice run an employee of the racetrack was running. Finally Peter decided to grace us with his presence and the race was on.
The track is set up with two straightaways on each side of the track where you could get your kart going 30 to 40 mph or so, followed by a series of hairpin turns and s curves. The track is slick and any mistake is rewarded with a spinout. My own personal strategy was balls to wall driving, sacrificing caution for speed. If I did spinout it didn't really matter much since we were averaging our top five laps, not our overall speed from all the laps. This meant that if you hit the track as hard and as fast as you could, toeing the line between cutting corners as quickly as possible and spinning out, and you did spin out you could toss that lap out and concentrate on the laps you did finish. I think my competitors (other than jantz) were too busy focusing on not losing control that they gave up speed for safety. Only Jantz used this strategy better than I and six points were his reward.
The final standings:
Jantz drove his best on lap 26 with a time of 32.170 seconds and gained 6 points
I had my best in lap 29 with a time of 32.339 and earned 5 points
Bing jumped into third on lap 30 with a time of 32.675 giving him 4 points
Ant waited all the way until the last lap to record a 32.987 good for 3 points
Pete recorded a 33.101 in lap 31 but lost to Rudy who's best 5 laps averaged out to a fraction of a second faster than Pete's best 5 laps.
Rudy's fastest lap was 33.199, .098 slower than Peter but still good enough to slide him ahead into 5th place and 2 points.
Which left Peter with a last place finish and 1 point.
It was a great day and I look foward to getting back out onto the track again in the near future. A big thanks goes out to our official photographer Juliana Smart, who got some great photos of the race. Check them out here if you're interested...http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2478459&id=3618421&l=659571388b
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