Practice Session Le Mans 22

The MPMC team headed over to Le Mans Karting Alain Prost early this morning for a track walk, kart allocation and drivers briefing.

All members have been waiting 2 years for this moment as payments were made to enter in 2020 Le Mans 24hr but unfortunately could not take place due to the covid pandemic. You can imagine some drivers may have been carrying a little more timber than normal and relying more on past Karting experience to pull them into contention.

After the two year wait it was finally time to get out on track, 32 degrees, no clouds in sight and 8 minutes into the 2hr practice session the disasters started to strike. The first was a brake failure, the kart was nursed back to the pits for 10 minutes repairs and the quickest lap of the session set on lap 15 1:02.932 by veteran MPMC Karter, Lambo

The kart was then brought into the pits for Zazza to take over, where disaster number 2 stuck. The karts being driven were twin engine 200cc but Zazza seemed to be driving like a novice putting in a best lap time of 1:15.366 and seemed to be getting eaten up by the field on corner exits, it was quickly worked out that one of the engines was not working so back into the pits for a 15 minute repair back out for 1 lap and still problems so straight back in for a 21 minute repair. Only 2 of the 6 drivers had track time with almost an hour of the session gone.

The remaining drivers split the time but we’re plagued with yellow flags and traffic unable to get decent laps onto the timing board. After the session had finished and still with right hand engine issues the organisers Teeside Karting confirmed they would change the carburatore tomorrow morning before the 1hr practice session.

All in all a bad start but looking at the final timing sheet the top 26 karts were covered by just over a single second. Without the problems the team believes there was more time to find.

The team are now hoping to get an early fix tomorrow, trouble free practice and a good start to the race…