On the way to the track, Tom Smith and Jon Whitwell were given approximately 20 minutes of a head start over Alex Tweed, who also had to go via The Lawns. However a good strategy by Alex’s direction strategist Josh Overhill saw them take the M62 and A1(M), and coupled with the blistering speed of Alex in his Nissan, he was able to pass Tom and Jon on the A66 in Middlesbrough with barely a mile left, but then ended up in the wrong lane of a roundabout, forced to go round it not once but twice, and this allowed Jon and Tom back through, and that was how the race to the track went.



Anyway, onto the actual race itself, which had been eagerly awaited by all since the moment it was confirmed. And they had a right to. A race around the brilliant Teesside track, against several other uni’s. Hull had met York twice already this season as part of the Hull v York series (the series tied 1-1 at the moment, the decider at Leeds on the horizon), and knew what they were all about, but with Durham and Newcastle also in the mix. Leeds were initially also on the entry-list, but dropped out not long before the event.
Hull were hoping to take all their best drivers to this event, but for a variety of reasons, only 10 of the original intended 18 were available. Two of the unavailable drivers were the top drivers Imran Khan and Pip Hammond. This left Jon Beagles, Nick Drewett and Josh Overhill to lead the line for Hull, as the trio formed their A team. The B team was testament to the quality of the 1st year drivers at HUGS, with Mark Foley, Sam Jackson and Tom Smith. Other notable drivers representing Hull on the day included Liam Lau, who had impressed greatly at BUMPS the week before. Jon Whitwell had in some respects saved the day for us all by agreeing to drive to the track, and then found himself racing. Steve Williamson, Social Sec of two years, was also in.

TEAMS:
A Team: Jon Beagles, Nick Drewett, Josh Overhill
B Team: Mark Foley, Tom Smith, Sam Jackson
C Team: Mike Miller, Will Russell, Alex Tweed
D Team: Paul Hutton, Adam Hibberd, Liam Lau
E Team: Ben Mason, Steve Williamson, Jon Whitwell

There were 15 teams in all, 5 from Hull, 5 from York, 3 from Durham and 2 from Newcastle.

Practice/Qualifying
This gave everyone a chance to familiarise themselves with the track. Early signs weren’t too great for us. When the first drivers went out for each team, Nick was the quickest Hull driver, but down in 8th place. But was he merely warming the kart up for Josh and Jon? Nick admitted to everyone qualifying wasn’t his strong point, so when Josh went out for the A Team, he subsequently beat Nick’s best time by 3 tenths of a second on his third lap, then improved by a further 3 tenths the following lap, and when the time came for him to hand over to Jon, was yet another 3 tenths quicker. Josh’s best time had moved the A Team from 8th to 4th. For the B team, Mark was quickly moving up the qualifying order. He had struggled the first time with an underpowered kart, but now with seemingly a much better kart, he was going alot quicker, moving the B Team up to 5th. Jon did slightly improve on Josh’s time, but it was not enough to move them up the order. This left Hull’s A and B teams 4th and 5th respectively. The other 3 uni’s each had a team on the front row of the three-abreast grid, with York’s A Team on pole, followed by a team from Durham and Newcastle.

(Unfortunately, I don’t have the qualifying times, so I don’t know the complete order)

RACE
The drivers lined themselves up on the grid, but before they could get underway there appeared to be some confusion over the order. One of the Newcastle teams’ drivers were adamant they should have been further up the grid, owing to the fact that they had changed their kart and had set a faster time in their initial kart, which wasn’t recorded. Although the driver did move forward slightly, the protest was thrown out, the Union Jack was dropped and the 15 karts moved off.
York’s Christian Wood soon seized the initiative, quickly pulling out a commanding lead whilst everyone else battled behind him. Not that it was much of a surprise, to say he dominated the race between Hull and York at Teesside a couple of months ago was a complete understatement. Durham and Newcastle’s top teams battled hard, perhaps too hard, for second, whilst Jon and Mark became involved in a four-way battle for fourth with 2 York drivers, the width of the track and ease of overtaking allowing them to change places often. Mike Miller was keeping several other drivers honest, but Paul Hutton and Ben Mason were in the wars, both spinning on the opening lap.
With a few laps gone, it finally began to look as if Jon had the measure of Mark and York’s B and C drivers, but slid wide on the exit of the second hairpin before the back straight, losing time and places. But that was only the start. Not long later, Jon’s attempt to repass York B’s Matt Grum at the first hairpin went wrong, and he ended up spinning him round, allowing Mark up to 4th. However, Jon waited for Matt to go back through, much to the despair of Nick and Josh. Jon later said that he did so as the incident had occurred right under the nose of a marshal, and the reason he waited was to avoid a black flag. Josh and Nick would later feel that this was fair enough. But the incident had cost the A Team about 12-15 seconds, and they were now down to 7th. But thankfully, the marshal chose not to hand out any black flags.
But the black flags were to be deployed not long after, as the marshals on the pit wall had decided they had seen enough of the persistent bumping between the Durham and Newcastle drivers fighting over second, and both were called back into the pits. Whilst the Durham driver accepted his punishment, allowing him a quick return to the race just in front of Jon, the Newcastle driver was absolutely furious, and wasted a lot of time arguing with the marshals, and when they did return to the race they were far behind.
It was soon time for the first round of driver changes, and the refuelling of the karts was required, with the rules stating that each team could call when they were going to be refuelled. This inevitably led to a massive rush of teams wishing to do so on 30 minutes. When Mark finished his stint (and what a great drive it was), the bay was empty, enabling to be refuelled straightaway, but the only team it disadvantaged was the A Team, who were also planning on refuelling that lap. Jon drove through the pits without changing, losing more time, and pitted a lap later, but with the fuel bay in use, it was decided to leave the refuel until the end of Nick’s stint. All this was however much more down to bad luck. Tom, Will, Adam and Steve were now on track for the B, C, D and E teams respectively.
On about 35 minutes, a quick but sharp shower of rain descended onto the track, slowing everyone down considerably. While most drivers coped with it, some didn’t, Adam found himself facing the wrong way several times, and there was a comedy moment as one Durham driver crashed coming into the pits. Nick and Tom were able to keep their karts facing the right way as they closed the top 3 down from 4th and 5th. York A continued to lead, now with Danny Maddox at the wheel, while Newcastle B and York C battled hard for second, neither of whom had made their fuel stop either. Nick was slowly but surely closing them in, whilst Tom was passed by York B’s second driver, dropping him down to 6th.
The rain soon stopped and the track soon dried. But Adam still managed to spin out heading down towards the right-hand hairpin from the banked corner, and was forced to get out of the karts and push himself back onto the track after becoming stuck. Nick was lapping solidly, whilst Tom was once again producing a brilliant display of defensive driving to thwart anyone that attempted to overtake, most notably one of the teams from Durham, who spent many laps behind him, unable to overtake. Nick was about 20 seconds ahead of Tom, but this was not enough if the A Team were going to emerge after the second round of driver changes ahead of the B Team, given that A had to refuel, which took about 40 seconds, and B didn’t.
Nick pitted for the A Team slightly early, to avoid getting held up at the refuelling bay, and fortunately this tactic worked, and Josh took over, intent on bridging the gap between himself and those in front. An efficient driver change for the B Team saw Tom Smith make way for Sam Jackson, and he emerged comfortably ahead of Josh. The pit-stops had shaken up the order, York’s B team were now up into second ahead of Newcastle. York’s C team had dropped back, they were as high as second at one point, but unfortunately for them, they pitted to refuel the same lap as Newcastle, and were forced to wait behind them, losing alot of time. Alex had taken control for the C Team, with Liam in for D and Jon Whitwell in for E.
Josh knew he had a lot to do in order to catch Sam, and although he was lapping quicker than him, and also allegedly lapping quicker than the driver of York B, it was not going to be enough to have caught up by the end of the race. But was the weather going to come to Josh’s aid? It certainly looked as if it was about to rain. Sam passed Newcastle’s driver for third, who was clearly struggling, and several laps later, Josh was also through, taking Hull’s B and A teams to third and fourth.
Finally, Josh got his wish, as with about 10 minutes of the race left, rain started to fall. It had been threatening for quite a while, but how long was it going to stay? Not long. Literally within about 3 laps, it had started to rain, stopped raining, and the track had dried. Josh was able to take vital seconds out of Sam’s lead over him, and the gap was now down to about 5 seconds, having been about 20 seconds when their stints began. But with the track dry again, Sam was able to pick up the pace again and prevent Josh from closing in even more. With just a few minutes left, the gap was about 3 seconds. But the charge was soon derailed when Josh went to pass a backmarker (York's E team) down the back straight. The driver was clearly reluctant to let him through, and forced him wide, losing valuable seconds and allowing the gap to go up to about 7 seconds. Time was running out, and then it ran out, as the chequered flag was waved, and the B team had beaten the A team by just 4.6 seconds. It then began to rain heavily almost as soon as the race finished, much to Josh’s disbelief.
York’s A Team of Christian Wood and Danny Maddox were the winners, not too much of a surprise there, they probably were the favourites going into the start of the race. York B were second, nearly 2 laps behind. Hull B took a deserved third place, 26 seconds behind York B and, as previously mentioned, just 4.6 ahead of Hull A. Newcastle two teams were 5th and 6th, but were clearly unhappy with the some of the decisions the marshals had made against them. Durham’s best placed team were 8th, with Hull’s C, D and E teams 11th, 13th and 14th. Another Durham team were 15th and last, after their last driver was forced to retire due to injury, and the kart was in the pits for several minutes before another driver was able to take over.

RESULTS (Position, team, kart number, laps, fastest lap, time behind winner, time behind kart ahead)

1. York A - Kart 2 - 101 laps - 50.407 (lap 25)
2. York B - Kart 5 - 100 laps - 50.688 (lap 31) - 1L + 43s, +1L + 43s
3. Hull B - Kart 11 - 99 laps - 50.883 (lap 29) - 2L + 18s, +26s
4. Hull A - Kart 12 - 99 laps - 50.557 (lap 22) - 2L + 23s, +4.6s
5. Newcastle B - Kart 18 - 99 laps - 51.153 (lap 32) - 2L + 37s, +14s
6. Newcastle A - Kart 15 - 99 laps - 50.498 (lap 11) - 2L + 48s, +11s
7. York C - Kart 3 - 98 laps - 51.261 (lap 30) - 3L + 5s, +7s
8. Durham B - Kart 4 - 98 laps - 51.436 (lap 31) - 3L + 17s, +12s
9. Durham C - Kart 19 - 97 laps - 52.917 (lap 21) - 4L + 24s, +1L + 7s
10. York D - Kart 9 - 97 laps - 51.387 (lap 81) - 4L + 28s, +4s
11. Hull C - Kart 1 - 95 laps - 51.771 (lap 60) - 6L + 39s, 2L + 9s
12. York E - Kart 8 - 94 laps - 51.794 (lap 24) - 7L + 2s, 14s
13. Hull D - Kart 13 - 93 laps - 51.684 (lap 77) - 8L + 19s, 1L + 17s
14. Hull E - Kart 14 - 92 laps - 53.453 (lap 49) - 9L + 28s, 1L + 9s
15. Durham A - Kart 10 - 91 laps - 50.309 (lap 23) - 10L + 48s, 1L +19s

Driver Of The Day - All 3 drivers of Hull B put in an absolute sterling performance, and it was going to be hard to choose which one won the award, but it was given to Tom Smith, who consolidated Hull B's position with a quick and consistent drive, and his defensive driving ensured few got past him. With all 3 drivers of Hull B in their first year and taking up exec positions next year, the future of HUGS is looking bright both on and off the track