NEC Charity Kart Race
21st Jan 2010
On Friday 15th January I was lucky enough to take part in the annual Racing4Charity Kart race at the Autosport International show in Birmingham. The event was raising money for ‘Malaria No More’ and the final total was around £60,000!
The race is organised by David Brabham and Bill Williams, and they manage to bring drivers from all over the world to race in this event.
I was in the same team as last year, but we raced under a different name, ”The Loose Cannons” – one I’d dreamt up whilst on the phone to my good friend and team captain Duncan Tappy – it made us laugh, so we went for it!
We managed to win it last year, so with our spot on the podium at stake, we all wanted to make sure we would finish 1st again, obviously…!
The race was held in the Live Action Arena and was put together in just 20 minutes. The only significant problem was the red and white crash barriers, they didnt have any water or sand in them to weigh them down, and once the first few drivers got in the karts for practice, we were getting red flagged every two minutes with these big lumps of plastic flying up in the air!
Anyway, the race finally began and our team took the lead. Around 20 red flags later we were still out in front, but my cousin Adam Christodoulou was on the tail of our team mate Paul Rees, and so we were hanging over the pit wall screaming and shouting encouragement for him to keep pushing hard to stay in front,.
Adam passed Paul with just five minutes to go, but then Paul managed to re-overtake Adam for the lead again so we had a right race on our hands! The final two miniutes were crazy-intense! Adam pushed Paul out of the way, and with only one-and-a-bit laps to go so we were going mental about what had just happened. But after the next two corners it didn’t matter as there was no track left to race on! The fragile track boundaries had totally fell apart and barriers were flying around three metres up in the air, so the race was red flagged yet again, and as the rules state the result is based on the last full lap meaning we regained the win – which of course was the right decision after some dirty driving ;P
It was like we had won a Formula 1 race (well, sort of)! Bring on next year :)
About Riki Christo
Riki Christodoulou has been racing as long as he can remember. Through karts, Formula Renault and now in the British Formula 3 International series. Riki continues to compete in top flight motorsport as one of the UK’s most promising young racing car drivers.
