Abbey National Karting Club

News

19/10/11
There was a very poor turnout for the club meet last night, the final one of the 2011 championship. We do not plan to run another one in the foreseeable future, but we will continue to schedule a monthly get together at an open race.
The ANKC team did extremely well in the Daytona Milton Keynes 24 Hour Race last weekend. Racing under the auspices of Race Drivers-Inc as team RDI Pro 1, in a field of 23 Dmaxes and 11 Prokarts, the team won the Prokart class by a huge margin, and came 5th overall. Click here to check out the results.

16/08/11
9 club members showed up for tonight's race. This was our biggest turnout of the year! It was an enjoyable evening with some very good racing taking place. Once again club members locked out the podium and were also in a majority in the top 10.
Daytona have announced the return of dashboards on the karts. These are due to be fitted within the next few weeks.

13/07/11
Only 6 club members met last night, but there was an extra-large grid of 35 karts. We would have finished in places 2 to 7, but once again Mike Lambden had to enter the pits. This time for a black flag, which knocked him down to 12th place. The next club meet is on Tuesday 16th August. As these open events are getting more and more popular I suggest that you get your entries in early.

15/06/11
7 club members turned up for the Open D40 yesterday evening to compete on the 35 kart grid. The 7 club  members acquitted themselves well, occupying all but 1 of the front 7 slots on the starting grid, and then going on to lock out the podium and take 6 of the first 8 finishing positions. It would have been even better if Mike Lambden had not suffered with an engine failure just before the end of the race when in 5th place.
If you want a bit of fun on the afternoon of 3rd July for just £50, come along and join in the BRKC event at Daytona. You may get to test yourself against some professional racing drivers! The total field will be randomly split into 2 sections. Each section will then get 10 minutes practice followed by a 30 minute race. The top 50% of finishers in each of these 2 heats will then go on to a 10 minute shoot out for the honours.

11/05/11
Sadly, not enough people were entering the races to keep the winter series going. We also anticipated entry numbers being too low to make it feasible to continue running our own exclusive races in the summer season. How right that decision was! Last night just 6 club members turned out for the open D40 which had been nominated as the first club race of the year. However, as it was an open event there was actually a full grid of 30, including a couple of pros from World Series Formula Renault 3.5. Bang on cue the rain started as we looked for our karts, but it stopped before the end of practice. So the race started on a wet track which was almost completely dry by the end. Stuart Shearman was the first ANKC driver to take the flag.

15/11/10
After a gap of a few years, this year the club is once again running a Winter Series, and to add a bit of extra spice we are using the Dmax karts. The first round took place yesterday evening with turns 2 and 8 never drying out, and drivers finding ice on their cars after the race. The conditions led to relatively slow lap times. In fact a casual observer looking at the race results might have thought that the race had been run using the prokarts on a dry track. Emilio Lopez led from start to finish, and Stuart Bone put in an excellent performance coming in a very close 2nd and also claiming the quickest lap time of the evening.

4/10/10
This last race of the season was held using the brand new fleet of Pro Karts. Dan Sherwood led from start to finish and in the process also snatched the club championship from Kam Ho.

3/8/10
25 drivers took to the track last night in in warm and dry conditions using the DMAX karts set up at their higher power setting. What an amazing race! Afterwards, I didn't hear any of the usual type of complaints about karts, but I did hear lots of complaints about tiredness and drivers' own inability to get the best out of the equipment provided! I am pretty sure that everyone on track must have set a personal best lap time and understand that the lap record also fell. I wish we could afford to use this fleet for all of our events.

8/6/10
We had a larger grid last night than at the 2 previous races with 22 taking to the track. It was technically a dry race, but you had to persuade yourself to ignore the light but clearly visible rain on your visor during qualifying and the first half of the race! Dan Sherwood arrived late, just in time to get out on track to qualify to take part, but too late to set a qualifying lap time. Starting from the back of the grid, he stormed through to finish 3rd, to my personal annoyance as he managed to pass me on the very last lap!

13/04/10
Last night the club held its first race of the season under excellent (dry and bright) conditions. This year we are not going to be using a handicap system, neither are we using weight or performance divisions. We are already planning to enter teams for 3, 12 and 24 hour open races this year.

13/10/09
In this year's 12 Hour Deepings Round Table F1 Charity Race, a team from ANKC once again put in a very good performance, finishing a close 2nd behind the Williams F1 team, and coming 1st in class. As a result our chosen charity, Willen Hospice, recently received a prize cheque for £2250.

The first 24 Hour kart race was held at Daytona Milton Keynes over the weekend of 19th/20th September. The club entered a team called "Abbey Farewell" for this event. In case you can't guess, the name stems from the fact that this may very well be the last event we enter while the company is still called Abbey. Unfortunately the name got entered into the race timing system incorrectly, so we appeared as "Abbey Fairwell"! The team itself fared a bit better. After 24 hours racing and 15 pit stops we crossed the line 4 seconds behind the winning team in the prokart class. We would have actually finished a lap ahead but for a quirk of the way mandatory service checks were run, which enabled the team we were racing to make less fuel stops than us.

Daytona MK have announced a boost of 30% in the power of their DMAX karts!

07/04/09
The club did not receive a grant from the Abbey Sports and Social Club this year. This meant that it was unable to continue to subsidise club events as it had in the past, and this in turn led to a drop in race entries from club members. We have therefore moved the club championship for this year to Whilton Mill, which has a lower minimum booking requirement and is also less expensive. The results from the March race will not now be counted towards the championship, which will be scored as the best 6 out of 8 races at Whilton Mill.
The first race last night led to some very close and enjoyable racing. Carrying extra weight is not such a handicap on the circuit at Whilton Mill as the one at Daytona; a fact much appreciated by 1 or 2 drivers (Louis) who have been eating too well over the last few years.

02/03/09
The new season opened with a good turnout of 27 drivers. Although the 4 division system did not work very well last year, it was decided to try again with the establishment of a 2 division system this year. The race director commented upon the good behaviour of all, with the black flag not being required, and quite an easy time being had by the track marshals. The handicap start once again ensured some interesting racing for all and a tough challenge for the quickest drivers.

07/10/08
The final race of our summer season took place last night in slightly drizzly conditions but with the track remaining dry for most of the time. No surprises in Divisions 1 and 3 which were already decided, but the final results in Divisions 2 and 4 might have been different if some of the other contenders had turned up for this last race.

05/08/08
The new 2-stroke karts have arrived at Daytona, and the new 4-strokes will be arriving over the next few weeks. So we will have all new gear to play with by the end of the month.

15/07/08
Daytona have 2 new fleets of karts on order. First, expected to arrive in August, will be the 2-stroke Rotax Max fleet. With 50% more power and 40 kilograms less weight they are expected to lap about 5 seconds quicker than the existing 4-stroke Prokarts. The 4-stroke fleet is also due to be replaced later in the year.