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| Image courtesy of mickbarrettracing on Instagram |
So as you know, I'm at university at the moment. I'm doing quite while, got a few firsts and 2:1's in my grades, only recently I found out that I got a first for a module in which I made a four page comic of a segment from my Road To Glory story. This week I went back to start my second term, and I am confident of getting some good grades again for around May time.
Anyway onto the topic at hand. When it came to researching for my novel, the car racing portion, I think I know more than enough about! Where I struggled, was karting. With my main character Alex's career based mostly around Lando Norris' career, I looked into the teams he raced for. At first, I wanted to get in touch with Ricky Flynn Motorsport, the team that took Lando to KF-Junior championships in the WSK Euro Series, CIK-FIA Super Cup and CIK-FIA European championship in 2013 and the following year, the big one, the CIK-FIA KF world championship.
Unfortunately, nothing came of RFM so I looked further back in Lando's career and found a team called Mick Barrett Racing, that Lando raced for in the early part of his karting career. We made contact, and I was invited down to the Paul Fletcher International circuit in Lincolnshire in the middle of November. My mum was the first one to get in touch with Mick and I was informed that he was a very down-to-earth fella, nonetheless having read up on him, I was still rather nervous due to the fact that his team was incredibly successful and were responsible for talents such as not only Lando Norris, but also his fellow 2019 F1 rookies George Russell and Alexander Albon.
At first, there was a miscommunication and we ended up at Mick's house! Which sounds stalkerish, but his team's official address was listed at his home, something I assumed to be a mistake but I later found out that his team's workshop is based at his actual house, which I was very surprised about. Anyway we got to the PFI circuit and it was absolutely incredible.
The PFI circuit was the passion project and brain-child of former karting world championship competitor Paul Fletcher, a very successful karting racer in his day and opened up the circuit in 1994, not long before it became the home of British karting after Rye House (where Lewis Hamilton began his career) sold out and became a primarily corporate event circuit. It got an upgrade in 2011 by incorporating a bridge and flyover extension to bring its length up to 1,382 metres/0.86 miles and becoming the only short kart circuit in the country to achieve an International A grade track licence.
As a result of this, the circuit has become the go-to destination for international championships in the UK, and it has hosted rounds of many European championships and was even the circuit selected to host the CIK-FIA World Championships in 2017. The two categories of karting utilised in this event are the OK-Junior and OK categories (which are descended from the KF-Junior and KF categories I was mentioning earlier), and the event saw the championships both won by Brits!
The OK-Junior championship was sealed by Dexter Patterson who was the 10th Brit to win it and the first Scot. He has also won British karting championships and he'll be I believe racing in Formula 4 this year, having already been competing in the winter-season based UAE F4 and set to have a full season in either German F4, Italian F4 or possibly even both, as is the trend these days.
The OK category title went to someone who unlike Patterson, wasn't a regular on the European scene, Danny Keirle. The only reason he was there was because it just so happened to be in the UK, he turned up as a complete and utter unknown having only been a presence in the UK up until that point, wrapping up championships primarily in the Senior X30 categories since he never had the backing to go prove himself on the European karting scene. I was lucky enough to meet Danny that weekend when I went to the Shenington kart circuit, he was very accommodating and a pleasure to talk to, very helpful guy! He was there coaching some of the kids who were testing there, since again unfortunately the money to move into car racing was never there.
Anyway I've kind of gone off on a tangent, I do apologise, I get like this when flustered which was very apparent to the people who I met! Mick greeted us at PFI and he took us to an on-site workshop where we met a guy named Matt Daniels, who is running a further education program as a part of Boston College. He showed us around his workshop, and told us about his students who were learning how to set up karts and a lot of his graduates had been selected by a lot of teams to be a mechanic for them, and even F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo had his own karting championship which was set up to have all the karts run by the organisers themselves.
The lads in the workshop, I have no idea what they knew of me or why I was there but nonetheless, were all great and they even wheeled out a kart onto the dummy grid for me to sit in whilst everyone took photos of all of us.
I do also want to mention something that you can see in that pic, the cap. Between 2010 and 2012, McLaren's F1 team had both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, with Hamilton winning the F1 championship in 2008 - his second season - then Button winning it for Brawn (now Mercedes) in fairytale fashion before joining Hamilton at McLaren for the 2010 season, and it was a British dream team that went on until Lewis jumped ship to Mercedes and went on to become a now six-time champion. However during that golden-age of the two most recent British champions being at a British team, I could never find a cap with both their names on it.
During Hamilton's proceeding three seasons in F1 before Button joined McLaren, he was partnered up in his rookie season in 2007 with the reigning two-time champion Fernando Alonso, then subsequently with Finnish driver Heikki Kovalainen. McLaren to my knowledge never had any issue putting Alonso/Hamilton and Hamilton/Kovalainen on the same cap, but I assumed when I could not find a Hamilton/Button cap that McLaren knew they'd have increased demand for merchandise from Britain and therefore had decided to make people pay for two caps, one saying Lewis and the other saying Jenson.
After 2012 when Hamilton left for Mercedes, I gave up hope on trying to find a Lewis and Jenson branded cap and moved on with my life. Then we were in the Boston College workshop and saw a plethora of racing caps on the wall, and I told Matt that I had always wanted a Hamilton/Button McLaren cap and he went up onto the wall on his ladder, picked a Vodafone (McLaren's title sponsor) cap off and handed it to me, and it actually had both Jenson and Lewis' names on it. I then asked "Where can I get one like this?" and as I held it up, he made the effort to push it back towards me and I realised he was letting me have it! It now hangs with pride in my room and I wear it very frequently.
The reason I wanted to talk about this is because the karting mechanical side goes very underappreciated, I even got to talk to a guy called Joshua Parker, currently the personal mechanic for a driver I met called Zac Meakin. A lot of the MBR drivers have their dads as mechanics, since karting is seen as a bit of a dad and son sport, but Parker was hired by Zac's father after at one point being the personal mechanic for Oli Norris, Lando's brother. (Who I met at Brands Hatch in August, it's quite the funny story, if I haven't already told it, I will when it's relevant)
Matt Daniels made a point to my parents and I that karting is not taken seriously as an industry, which is why his program gets very little appreciation but it really is! I learned so much going to PFI and Shenington, such as the combination of chassis, classes, engines, tyres, it was so damn vast! Just as you park up at PFI, there's a shop branded with Birel, a kart chassis developer. When you walk in, there's all the chassis they develop for a vast array of categories, there's also karting overalls and clothes, helmets, number stickers, spare parts, and it's not just Birel that makes chassis for karting.
You've got Tony Kart, Synergy, Project One Racing, CRG, Gillard, Xenon, Kosmic, Exprit, heck even Fernando Alonso has a kart chassis developing team that made the very kart that Lando Norris took to world championship winning success. You've also got to remember the amount of categories of racing kart you can get, which in the UK include Bambino (for ages 6-8), Cadet (8-13), Juniors (11-16), Seniors (16-) and Gearbox (16-), then there's a huge variety of engines too such as IAME 2-stroke and Honda 4-stroke engines for Cadets, and in the Junior categories you can have such engine brand choices as Rotax, Vortex and Tal-Ko. Don't ask me to give you specifics here, it's so vast and even I have a hard time digesting it all, and that says more than even the most knowledgeable person on the matter.
My point is, it's an insult to think it's all just child's play with karting. The world of karting has so much to offer and there's so many chances to make money in this world, it is a serious industry that involves a lot of people. Motorsport whether it is karts, cars, bikes, it's all one big machine with so many cogs in it, you'd have to go to a karting event of that scale just appreciate and realise how vast it really is!
Shortly after visiting the Boston College workshop, Mick took me to see a man named Paul Barnicoat who helps run the circuit, and his son Ben is a racing driver. Ben is the 2014 Northern European Formula Renault champion but has also won many British and European karting championships, but above all else is the driver with the most wins of the blue ribbon British karting event, the Kartmasters Grand Prix which is held every August at PFI. He now races these days for Carlin in the European and Asian Le Mans Series, as well as the odd GT race for McLaren, all as a result of his involvement with an organisation called Racing Steps Foundation.
I had gotten in touch with one of the founders of RSF and he promised to send me a book containing the entire history of the organisation, which never happened however Paul had a few gathering dust in his house and promised by the time we went back down in two weeks to watch the finale of the Trent Valley Kart Club Autumn Trophy, he'd have it for us. Well he didn't break his promise and I have it in my home and it has been incredibly helpful, since it's very much relevant for my Road to Glory book.
The day after going to PFI, I drove down to Shenington and Mick had called up on our behalf to talk to Sonja Game, the Shenington Kart Club competition secretary. We turned up and there was a test day going on, and she handed me a load of leaflets and books which were incredibly beneficial when it came to distinguishing one class from another. We then went looking around to meet as many people as possible.
One of the people we met was called Ben, specifically Ben Cheeseman, whose name may not sound familiar to a lot of you but he's the guy responsible for the cars behind many drivers who rose through the ranks at Carlin including Lando Norris. I knew of him because he used to appear in Lando's Twitch streams, he was rather funny and would often be the one whose misfortune was laughed at, all in good fun and he took it like a champ! He was great to talk to, gave me some great insight into what it's like working for Carlin, travelling to all these countries, living life as a mechanic. He follows me on Instagram now and will no doubt see this, so hope to see you soon, Cheeseman!
A man named Les was helping us meet people and he got the attention of a kid testing that day, Jack Ferguson. Jack - like me - is on the autistic spectrum but he also was born with a hole in his heart and had issues with his joints, so he's been through the thick of it to say the least. We got talking (well, Jack isn't much of one to talk but I got some words out of him), heard his story from his dad too and I think we all became good friends. Jack is damn fast too, apparently he won an indoor karting championship which was why he earned a chance to test with the Jade Racing Team, the team that Danny Keirle was coaching for and how I met him like I was mentioning earlier.
Two weeks later was when we went back to PFI and spent the weekend with Mick Barrett's team, and I met Tom Gamble who was helping them out. Tom was the 2017 Ginetta Junior champion, raced British F3 the following year and fought off the likes of 2016 British F4 and 2018 Formula Renault champion Max Fewtrell, 2017 British F4 champion Jamie Caroline and 2018 British F4 champion Kiern Jewiss to win the last McLaren Autosport BRDC award. Gamble earned a chance to drive a 2013-spec McLaren F1 car just a few weeks prior to meeting him, Mick had attended the prize-winning test at Silverstone and he said it was an experience like no other.
When we did go back to PFI, it had been my birthday during the week and Mick had gotten me a present. He had gotten the Racing Steps Foundation book from Paul Barnicoat in his van, but he also reached in and presented a McLaren cap saying Happy Birthday and signed by both their F1 drivers, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, Jr.! Holy crap that was insane, I couldn't believe how lucky I truly was to get that. According to Mick, he's friendly with someone at McLaren who had asked him for some tyres and he agreed on the condition of getting a signed cap for me by both their drivers.
We were allowed into Mick's team tent across the two days and got talking to a driver named Zak Meakin (who I mentioned earlier), he let me know about the life as a racing driver and about a particular karting driver who was incredibly socially inept. I also learned from Zak and Mick that there is multiple karting championships in the UK, with Super One being the one I thought was the only championship but there was also the MSA/Motorsport UK British Kart Championships (formerly Formula Kart Stars) and also the British Open Championship.
When I was at Shenington, I learned about the crippling costs of entry level Cadet karting and to race on a national level it'll cost about five times as much than the equivalent step up to Junior level karting. The guy who told me has a son racing in Cadet level, but he said he wasn't going to waste his money racing karts on a national level whether that be Super One, MSA, Open or this other championship that Zak told me was the premier British karting series, Little Green Man.
This new information steered me into the direction of how I plan on my main character getting to race in national level Cadets. All drivers who intend to race on a national level need to get a novice licence by competing for a year in club level championships, which means you compete at one circuit for the space of a year.
PFI's representative club is called Trent Valley Kart Club, and they host all their events on the first Sunday of every month. I attended the finale of the Autumn Cup on December 1st, it began back in September and consisted of four rounds all on the first Sundays of every month. Then at the beginning of this month, the Winter Cup which runs until the first Sunday of April, before the main season begins starting in May and ending with the blue ribbon event, the MSA/Motorsport UK Kartmasters Grand Prix in August. There are many other kart clubs across Britain, and every driver that has gone through the ranks had to start somewhere.
I'll be honest, I was nervous as fuck being there and we (including my parents) were just loitering, probably getting in people's way. I really struggled to approach people, even inside the Mick Barrett Racing camp, but thankfully Zac's mechanic Josh as well as a driver called Cole Kilner and his dad too, I feel friendly enough with them all now that I won't need to be so cautious. I'm like this everywhere of course.
This year, I am planning on attending a lot of motorsport events such as perhaps the Rotax Max Challenge European Trophy event at PFI and the British Grand Prix, but certainly Formula E in London where I'm meeting a beloved long-time friend, as well as the Kartmasters Grand Prix at PFI and also the Croft BTCC event. I have met a lot of great people over the years, and awkwardly blabbed away at them, such as at Croft last year when I met Carlin's boss Trevor Carlin himself as well as his two F4 drivers Joe Turney and eventual champion Zane Maloney.
I get all anxious meeting all these people because they're all part of this machine that I want to accurately portray and I do look up to a lot of them. The world is still so vast, there's still a lot of unknowns but I am thankful. I'm grateful to so many people, especially for Mick Barrett and Matt Daniels, I'm looking forward to going back to PFI for the Kartmasters if not the Rotax Max Challenge event.
If you ever want to attend an event at PFI, I'm linking their website which will take you straight to their race calendar and then you can search for other relevant information on the site: http://tvkc.co.uk/beta/racecalendar/
Thank you for reading and huge thank you again to Mick Barrett and his family for being so accommodating, also thanks for the hats both you and Matt! Not only did I get a McLaren Jenson/Lewis cap and one personally signed by McLaren's two current drivers, but I also got a Mick Barrett Racing beanie and another guy there got me a yellow Dunlop cap too! I take my hats off to everyone, and then I'm immediately putting them back on so I don't drop any of them!
Thank you to drivers such as Cole Kilner (who I forgot to mention won the Autumn Series championship in Senior X30 category) as well as Zac Meakin, his mechanic Josh Parker, Cole's dad too. Not forgetting also the people at Shenington, such as the Jade Kart team and their driver Danny Keirle, also Jack Ferguson and his dad, the guy there called Les who was helping us, Sonja Game too! I know I sound like I'm accepting an award which is hasty considering I haven't got anywhere near publishing what I'm planning on doing, and I'm going to miss someone inevitably, so I'll stop it here.
But if any of you have contributed even slightly, you know who you are and know I am very grateful. I've very much benefitted a huge amount from being invited down by Mick, it'll help a huge tonne when I get to doing the karting portion of my story!
Alright. That'll be all from me. If you liked what you had to read here, feel free to drop your email address at the side if you're on desktop or follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat if you want to see more of what this pleb has to say.
So until we meet again,
Luca.
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