Originally William started as a Bambino at Daytona Milton Keynes, they were very supportive and have both good facilities and a great team, there process includes a staged approach to karting
The bambinos don’t race, but they do have an introduction programme followed by practice sessions graded as beginner, intermediate, and advanced, along with race schools that allow progression, at Bambino they use the North circuit which is small and allows for lots of laps in a session.
Once the confidence increases you can look at the larger track, you must be 8 years old and able to lap the North circuit with a certain lap time, William still holds the record there!
The move to the international track required attendance of race school and again meeting a lap delta, once this is achieved you can enter practice sessions, sprint races, and then once competent the Inkart series.
So William followed this path, from April 2021 until we entered the Inkart winter series in 2022 and again the spring Inkart, within this, we had private hire days for tuition as well as many practice sessions and sprint races, we were generally at Daytona 3 or 4 weekends a month doing something.
There was little chance of progression beyond corporate karting so I started to look at other options, Kart 100, kart ownership, and racing with a team, we visited Shenington race circuit as a ‘MSUK introduction to Karting’ morning, this allowed William to try a ‘proper’ kart and get a few laps around the circuit, it showed us how you progress with licences and racing.
Whilst there we had a long chat with the Jade racing team, they offered a full test day with a Birel ART Waterswift at one of Shenington’ s practice day, William was given a brand new kart and we had a full day of 8, 7-9 minute sessions. The cost was £250 for the hire plus VAT and fuel, the track fees which were around another £100.
The team were very good, and we scheduled a second practice day to include an ARKS test, again the price was similar but of course you have to add the price of the ‘Get Started’ pack from MSUK. So that completed and William licenced we continued in this until he was happy to do a race weekend, you are likely to have to commit 2 days to club karting and 3 or 4 as you progress. In May we looked at the cost of the kart, the cost of maintenance and running with the team along with a mechanic, the kart was around £6k, the 2 days in an awning is around £500 plus fuel, entry fees etc, generally at cadet level its costing around £800 per a round to have a place in the awning and manufacturer support, I look after the kart, I do the maintenance at the race weekends but Jade do the preparation at a fixed cost so the kart is always ready when we arrive.
There are of course pros and cons to any form of karting, limited by your skill level, storage and transport arrangements, this works well for us as we turn up at either Shenington or Whilton Mill, the kart is there and prepared, I just have to complete getting it race ready and look after it for the day, having Jade on hand means I get to learn from the experts, they step in whenever there is a big problem to help and they carry all the spares we might need, its more costly than going alone but we are in a kart that allows progression and will have a sensible life as it will progress us into the junior class by just taking the restrictor out.
One of the down sides is we cant just go testing whenever we want as we don’t have the ability to transport the kart or all the equipment we need to look after it, it would be cheaper but I doubt we could of progressed as well as we have.
The team always have a driver coach on hand to look after the cadets, Marcus Littlewood is helping all the cadets in the team whilst he works towards the British Championship in the Senior X30 class, this has meant we are getting training from someone who is at the forefront of the sport.
The best advice regarding karts and classes we had was to visit our local circuits, talk to people and see what is popular, we ended with the choice of Waterswift or Rotax and I hope we have chosen the right path!
William is progressing as a novice, having completed 3 races and we aim to see out the 2023 season with Jade, we will of course be looking at next year, at the moment I can't see any reason to change what we are doing.
Kind Regards
Mike Bennett
