ABT Cup 2011_24th March 2011, 7 - 11pm

Finally after a long absence from karting I finally have the opportunity to be given a revival dose of karting adrenaline, in the form of an endurance night race at Kartright Speedway. The event was the inaugural ABT Cup 2011, with the main organizers being ABT and Autovox.

A total of 10 Teams, comprising of both vendors and media, were invited to take part in the race this year and thankfully I was invited to kart with Team 8Flo, a up and coming Media Company in Singapore. Basically our team went in as one of the underdogs in this friendly competition as the organizers teams ABT, Audi SG and their VIPs fielded some pretty fast karters. 

Not wanting to let ourselves done, our team performed relatively well in the qualifying, taking 5th place on the starting grid. Kart #6 was our accompanying kart for the individual practice and qualifying round and the kart was not exactly handling very well as the kart was rather twitchy to our braking inputs. 

After the Qualifying, another draw was made and this time, we managed to draw Kart #7. The kart proved to be more well-balanced in the handling department and all of us were clocking better timings than we were previously. We progressed from the 5th place on the grid to 3rd place after the starting 1st lap before an held out and a corrective mistake by our first driver allow 3 other teams to overtake us. For the rest of the first 8 minutes, we were running at 6th place. On came the changeover to the 2nd driver and our position progressed from 6th to the 3rd place at the end of 2nd segment. Our 3rd driver held on our 3rd place podium position for pretty much the whole time he was on the track and this put us on the road to a podium finish for our Team's maiden race. Our last driver, being the fastest driver amongst all of us, did well to put up a great display with his karting finess, even holding the fastest lap record for two laps during his stint on the track. on the last lap out we were only 2.09s behind the 2nd place Team and we managed to overtake them after the final turn. This placed Team 8Flo in 2nd position for the night!

After the Race!

8Flo Team: Max (myself), Joel, Nicholas, Gautham

Each participant receive a Cert of Participation in the end

And the Podium Finishers! From left to Right:
Team VIP (Far Left), Team Audi SG (Centre), Team 8Flo (Far Right)
Accompanied by Fabian in white (Autovox); Wolfgang in red (ABT)

I would hereby like to thank Chris (8Flo), Brinal, Brigid, Fabian (Autovox) especially for the invite! be sure to invite us down for the next!

Till then :D