In the end, they are fun. Just a bit frustrating when the lottery doesn’t go in your favour
Time for an update ! @Bimodal_Rocket @Alan_Dove @KartingIsLife @speedcraft
But no videos this time 
Last Sunday was the 2nd round of the Kart Fun Trophy Endurance. 8 Hours of non-stop racing, with a working pitlane (so we were able to strategize), still with my friend Ludwig Ghidi !
This time we were ready with some home-made signs :
And an excel sheet to calculate the stint times that compensate directly depending on how much time you drove !
As always, there are 3 classes racing (65kg min, 75kg min, 85kg min), 46 teams total. We have a 15 minutes qualification session, then we have to do 11 pitstops, of 2 minutes each, with a kart change everytime. Base strategy would be to do 38 minutes stints, but you can do from 15 minutes to 60 minutes stints, in case your kart is slow, or it is raining and it is going to dry up.
Qualification :
POOOOOOOLE POSITION !
The track was damp, very slippery, especially because the day before they hosted a IAME training day, so the track was massively gripped up.
I don’t know what happened to be fair, I was just flying. And I lost time on my best lap … I really didn’t expect that, but I take it !
Race :
Unfortunately, I brain-farted my start. It was a Le Mans start, and I wanted to climb on the right side of the kart, press first on the throttle then seating in it. But I panicked, took too much time and lost roughly 20 spots before the first turn.
But it doesn’t stop there ! Obviously my pace was a lot better of the people in front so I got impatient and a bit feisty. Some other driver didn’t like that and pushed me offtrack. I lost 30 seconds, he got a 30 seconds penalty, it was useless but that is racing I guess. After 38 minutes I decided to leave the wheel to Ludwig. We were almost last in class/
He was doing great but we decided to shorten his stints, as the track was not drying fast enough. He suffered from a very bad kart (4 seconds slower than usual) but we were able to change earlier that 15 minutes without any penalties.
On his last stint, he couldn’t avoid another driver that was facing the wrong way. He injured his back and I had to drive for almost 3 hours straight. He did a fantastic job on climbing back the order.
At least the track was dry and would remain dry. All 3 karts I got were on the slower end of the spectrum (1’14"0, 1’13"3, 1’13"8), roughly 1.5 second slower per lap than the best karts on the track, on the same weight. But I couldn’t care less, as I was focusing on putting down consistent laptimes and on preserving my body. I knew I would be driving for a long time, so I need to chill and be clean. We knew that our strategy would help at the end, as we would have longer stints, gaining time on the others because they would have to pit more than us.
This led us to the third spot of the podium in class in our penultimate stint. Ludwig got a very strong kart, achieving 1’12"2 and being below 1’12"5 consistently. With 26 minutes remaining, we decided to do the last pitstop. And we got a bad kart 
Ludwig went from low 12s to 15’0, and couldn’t stay in front of P4 in class, who was lapping 12s. In the last lap, we lost the podium spot, and finished P4.
Conclusion :
We had a very hard race overall. I messed up the start, got crashed, Ludwig got injured, we only got 2 good karts over 12 we used. So P4 was great, despite doing the pole. We were disappointed, but I feel we have a real chance at the championship. We are P2, at 190 points against 192 points for P1. We are a great team on track, and our respective girlfriends are really helpful as race engineers, handling pitstops and strategies. I decided to code some script to help the strategy, calculating stints and maybe analyzing laptimes ?
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Woo! Congrats. Sounds like some battle karting!
It was great ! I really like the endurance championship