As some of you might have seen in the official LFS forum there has been another kart meeting in the UK this year. While this is not really worth a news article on its own we sent out our own field reporter to write down everything that actually happened there from his very own point of view

By the way, there is another LFS meeting in the UK in three weeks. You wanna come?

And that’s really how I found out about it. No news in the LFS forum or else, just a weird comment on the #liveforspeed IRC channel, the place where the weird people meet. Anway, once I got to know that there was a meeting I had my flight booked as the last time I attended to so a meeting was quite fun.

Friday – Who the f*** is everyone?

The first day started at the airport (well, not exactly, but I’ll spare you the boring details) on Stansted. Vic, who was coming with his car from Holland, was nice enough to make a small detour to pick me up. And as he already had been a few hours on the road, he needed some espresso refill. We all know that an espresso come in a small cup, but at Stansted they probably serve you the smallest espresso in the world in a very tiny cup, that is about 1/3 filled. After made a few jokes about it we hit the road for a drive to Wales in a kinda sporty vehicle.

We were one of the first people to arrive and once we got there I noticed that apart from Vic I knew no one there, but luckily they all turned out to be very nice blokes and a very weird person (Becky). Also, thanks to Jason’s Wife there was a big pile of food that soon was not so big anymore…

Surprisingly and although we had a few drops of rain on our way over, no rain was seen for the next days, but what might be a heat wave in Wales is still not very enjoyable to sit out there in the evening. Anyway, there was plenty of beer too. And while more and more people were arriving I even spotted a few familiar faces, one being Dean aka Franky500 and the other one being Bob “Ben” Smith.

Most of the evening was spent inside playing pool or chatting, some parts of the night were spent kicking snoring people.

Saturday – This is a fun event, right?

The day started out very British, or Welsh, queuing and something that is considered Breakfast. Our tiny group of about 27 people went to a small shop who took a few minutes to work through the crowd and serving something that is apparently normal to eat there. While the toast, coffee, eggs and beacon was OK (save to eat) the rest tasted either like water (tomatoes) or like something you really never want to eat again. One of the latter things were apparently supposed to be sausages, but coming from a country that is known worldwide for its sausages I can only say that the UK version is not even close to an average one.

Anyway, while some (Vic and me) were just getting their “meal” some were already finished and slowly started to go outside. At this point I just wanted to point out that it was supposed to be a nice and relaxed day with a bit of karting, chatting and lots of beer and food in the evening. Right after the first people got out of the shop for some fresh air we heard the first engine (Becky’s car) come to life. Soon after that everyone was gone apart from those (Ben, Dave, Dean, Vic and me) who didn’t know the way to the track which turned out to be very well hidden. After a few calls, wrong turns and a very long journey through the Welsh Countryside we got finally got there just in time for a short talk from the Owner of the track about how we should have to behave and all the other bla bla…

The track itself was really pleasant to drive and had some nice fast turns (T1) and also some blind corkscrew type downhill corner (T3). Bumps weren’t initially that bad but more about it later. The only two problems were that the track was really short (lap time around 27 seconds) and that there was a huge speed difference between the karts (around 3 seconds). Out of the 10 Karts we had, 2 very really fast, 2 a bit slower and the rest getting slower and slower.

The event consisted of a 10 minutes practice session for every driver, followed by a 60 minutes team sprint race and as main event a full 3 hours endurance race with fuel stops and and stuff.

1 hour Race

As this is probably the only track in the world without a timing system (laps were counted by hand) the grid based the kart number the teams were given randomly. As the karts were only able to last around 50 – 55 mins on a fuel load (as result of removing the limiters and sticking to the tiny default tank) the agreement was made that as soon as the first kart runs out of it the race would be stopped, everyone refilled and then restarted from that very same spot. The other thing was obviously that every driver from each team has to drive, so 20 mins per driver.

My start (kart #5) into the race was good and we had a bit of luck with the kart which turned out to be decent. I was able to make 2 places up ending us on 3rd place after my stint which was not very eventful. After Vic took over I had some time to chat with the rest about the track, karts and the usual stuff while watching a mean looking Vic driving around on the track holding our position and building up a gap to the teams behind. I would love to post some lap times at this point but there are none.

Anyway, last stint belonged to shirtless Ben and as promised the race was stopped around 55 minutes. Although “stopped” seems to mean different things to different people and the same things goes for any yellow flag that was waved that day. I admit that some of those flags were shown way too early so you usually could coast to the actual incident we would drive really slowly for safety reasons. However it turned out to be that the 2nd race was stopped at some point to remind the drivers about the flag rules as they usually started to floor in height of the incident so they wouldn’t be passed on the next corner.

After the race we were presented the following results with a well-deserved win for the least competitive team consisting of Dean, TVE and Becky who already had worn her own race suit all morning, even before breakfast.

3 hours Race

After our lunch break we prepared ourselves for the main event, switching the karts that was so the first races winner would get 10th place kart, 2nd place would switch with 9th place and so on. However due to Deans size there was only one kart were he could sit more or less comfortably their team stuck to their kart.

This time we had #6 and again I did the first stint. The red light / green switch was pretty much non-existent but I managed to pass another surprised person. Then we hit the straight after T2 and I knew that this would be some depressing race with a really slow kart. Corners were fine but as soon the corner ended we were a sitting duck for pretty much the rest of the race which we ended last by quite a margin. During this race we had a few kart changes but none was actually good. We went from good handling but poor engine to a kart that was awesome in T5 but steering heavily to the left on the rest of the track, probably due to toe or a bend chassis but with a slightly better engine. The 3rd kart we had wasn’t really bad anywhere, it was more like average bad. The only good thing about those karts was that we could drive a bit less competitive and conserve our bodies a bit. At least we hoped so after our first stint (again 20 mins each).

However it seems that I’m getting older and older and so I was quite relieved to get out of the kart after my 2nd stint. Due to those high speed corners, bad karts and some bumps my rips let me know that they didn’t like this at all and my hands had some hard work to do as well keeping the kart on track. For my last stint I put a t-shirt under my suit and that helped a lot with the breathing in the fast corners.

Anyway the rest of our group wasn’t feeling much better so everyone moved a bit slow and careful the next day. Winning team was again #10. The racing overall was really clean and for most of the time also very fair and we all showed a really fast pace considering the material every team had to deal with.

The “party” at the evening

We returned back to Jason’s place and had a nice BBQ with more queuing for Burgers, cheap jokes and clichés (“I should have put my towel there to keep my space”) and lots of beer. Being in the UK I expected fog rain and more rain but to my surprise during the whole weekend there was no rain. Unfortunately the local insects came around for a visit and we decided to go inside for pool, watching the F1 qualification rerun and snacks and chatting. Surprisingly people were a bit knackered from the long day and instead of a party it became more like a relaxed evening with laughing and some early sleepers and F1 Qualification. Sadly +80% seemed to be smokers so it was quite foggy inside at times and so I left the room a few times for some fresh air.

The later the evening became the “better” the ideas and improvement suggestions for LFS and racing simulators in general became and no one should ever talk about most of them again.

Sunday – The noisiest car in the UK

Sunday started very slowly while discovering all kinds of bruises everywhere, but judging from the slow and careful movements the other made I was not the only one. Once everyone was more or less awake or had their coffee and after some early departures the rest of us gathered in the living room for the Hungarian F1 race.

Once that was over we hit the road back to Stansted in what must be the World’s loudest BMW. Don’t get me wrong here, I really like a characteristic exhaust noise, but if you can merely hear the others talking once you hit 80 km/h and feel the engine in your stomach vibrating it’s a bit too much. While the 4 of us (Pete, Gerdoner, Johannes) were enjoying the British Countryside on our way we came to notice that about every five minutes the was a car stranded at the side of the road, which is something you rarely see in Germany…

Anyway as all journeys have come to an end we arrived at Stansted at around 8 in the evening and after a long visit at the local fast-food center we said good-bye to Pete and Gerdoner and spent the following night at the airport, as our flights were on Monday morning.

A night at the Airport

So here we (Johannes and me) were, 9 hours till our flights would leave and absolutely nothing to do. So we had our first walk around the airport to see if there is something even remotely interesting or at least to find a more or less decent spot where could stay for a couple of hours. And so we settled down at a rather large bistro type shop, while everything else around us was closing down for the night. Even the security must have been asleep as at some point some alarm signal went on for about 30 mins…

Anyway, over the long night and many coffees later 2 things happened: Firstly we spent some quality time at the air hockey table which gets more and more fun the later it gets and is quite the workout. Secondly I was witness to the Swedish way of picking up women which is apparently drinking and ordering more coffee…

And after a very long night, being very entertaining with all kinds of weird conversation topics we could finally board our planes and after 27 hours being awake I was finally back home.

Final Words

Even though I barely knew anyone and the short notice I can’t wait for the next Meeting. Thanks to all who made this weekend a very memorable one. See you all next year… :)