Saturday, April 05, 2008

The Lewis Hamilton of Malvern

Went down to Malvern on Friday to go carting on Saturday at Hereford carting (See the link here http://www.herefordshireraceway.org.uk/)


Stayed over at Tony and Gill's on Friday night and we had a lovely evening - Gill cooked and we sat around chatting. Thom (pictured here) is Gill and Tony's son, and he delighted in winding me up about how he was going to beat me (Hmm, or was it me winding him up?) Anyway, we got to the race track and it was lovely and sunny, despite the forecast of wintery showers. There were 15 of us, most of which were poeople I used to work with, so it was great to see them all again.

Here's a group photo of us all. Note Barry 'the Ninja' at the front - Im next to him with the blue crash helmet ,and Carol is next to me with the silver helmet.


We had a couple of warm up laps and then it was into the main racing. Out of four qualifying races, I came 2nd, 1st, 1st, 4th., which got me a place in the semi finals (the 3 of the four finals)


However, towards the end of the day, we had hail and snow! So, as you can imagine, this made for pretty bad driving conditions! In my final race, as tried to cut 3 other drivers up on the first bend, but came a little unstuck - to say the least! To cut a long story short, I ended up 'cutting the grass' a lot - oh and swearing a bit too.


Anyway, all the banter, and wind up's I had directed at Thom (he's 14, I should have known better, but he taunted me just as much back!) came back to haunt me, as I relised he had made it into the final. There was no way he could win, I assured myself, but I turned out to be wrong! In fact it was a podium 1 and 3 for the Culshaw family, as Tony came in third. Anyway, heres the pics of them collecting their trophy's. Well done Thom! I expect I am *never* going to hear the last of this! Thom collects his trophy...Tony is overly emotional collecting his gong :-)


On one of the laps I was came first on, I decided I was so far in front I would try and beat the lap record, as I was so cock sure I could win the bottle of champagne on offer for the fastest time. However, this photograph shows Chris got around in 25 point something seconds...rats! I felt sure my name was on that bottle of Spumanti!

Oh well, I was robbed!

4 comments:

phil said...

beaten by a bloody kid, you should be ashamed, have you never heard the word CHEAT?

Anonymous said...

Someone's got some weight loss to do... hmmmmmmmmm????

Mark T said...

Yes, I thought that too, but I didn't like to mention it - I understand Chris is a little bit sensitive to comments about his weight

Mark T said...

Phil - don't you think I didn't try?! I got flagged on my first lap for dirty driving!

I prefer to call it tactical overtaking, though