Hokey Cokey

only us in the GMS awning at Whilton

According to Google’s AI, the Hokey Cokey is a simple song and dance where you put body parts in and out and shake them all about.

That sounds scarily similar to racing at Whilton Mill in the rain. Google’s AI also suggests the word “fun”, but that’s definitely not rain-racing at Whilton.

Kate Broadbent signed up for the Whilton Mill WM Plate race weekend. Good practice we thought. An opportunity to get the final signature on Kate’s upgrade card we thought (to go from inter-club license to national licence). What we hadn’t thought about was who would be taking part. The winner of the WM Plate can put WM on their kart rather than a racing number. It’s a hugely prestigious thing, and racers come from all over the country to take part. Seriously good racers come from all over the country to take part.

Kate was racing with GMS, and it was GMS who sent out the invite to all GMS racing drivers. A bit like the Hokey Cokey, legs out, not in. You can imagine a virtual row of GMS drivers, and at the invitation to race for the WM Plate, they all (except Kate), put their legs out and took a step backwards, leaving Kate standing there by herself.

So, there we were, at Whilton, in the torrential rain, all by ourselves in the GMS awning. It was just us and Miles Savage, the GMS Team Manager acting as our mechanic and coach for the weekend.

Practice on the Saturday was awful. Miserable. It rained so hard that rain came through the heavy-duty awning, and we settled ourselves with tools and kart in the only corner of the awning that wasn’t wet. Throughout the day, things were always hanging to dry in front of the heater, including the kart’s air filter.

Kate drying her feet and gloves

So how did Kate do? It was Kate’s first time in the rain at Whilton, and to be honest, she struggled. There was definite improvement throughout the day, and Miles was doing his best to adapt the kart’s setup for the conditions.

bent steering column, track rod, kingpin and chassis

Kate kept on pushing, and ended up in the wall on her third practise session. I’d hoped that the bent track-rod, steering column, and kingpin were the only things broken. (Kate was fine, just a nasty bruised elbow.) But I could see from just looking at the front of the kart, that it was horribly bent and undrivable.

a borrowed jig meant we were able to straighten Kate's kart

Following on from our Hokey Cokey dance theme, we now needed a jig. We borrowed a trackside jig from Blueberry Motorsport (thank you Sean). After much huffing and puffing with giant sized bending poles, and Kate and I hanging on the jig table to stop it from lifting, Miles managed to get the kart close enough to straight so Kate could continue racing.

I know that racing with a team is expensive, but without Miles’ jigging expertise the race weekend would’ve been over for us. Thank you Miles and GMS (again!).

So, Kate managed to race on the Sunday. The sun did come out, but the track was still very, very wet. We managed a set of slicks for the final (so we now have another set of practice slicks that are just one race old). And Kate came an educational P27 out of a 31 kart grid.

More Hokey Cokey and less jig needed to get better at a wet Whilton. We’ll be back. We’ve signed up for more (highly likely wet) practice on 17th, 23rd and 27th December! Ho, ho, ho!