Arse, meet Thomasr

If you'll excuse the (mild) profanity, you need to understand that I let my go-karting team down badly at today's event at the VACC circuit in Port Melbourne.

In short, I had my arse handed to me by all and sundry.

The excuses:

1. I had two laps practise.
   As I had on-air commitments at 11:30am (ie my actual segment on 3AW- the one that pays the bills), I had to go out early, with minimal instruction, and try to cut a few laps. I did an out lap, a hot lap and cool down lap.
   I was stone cold last on the timing sheets at this point.
2. My kart cut out at full throttle.
   Greg Murphy complained about this more than I, but if you didn't "roll" the throttle on, it coughed and lost momentum. Go karts are all about maintaing corner speed and momentum.
3. Two of the "media" guys were ringers with professional driving experience.
   I know this, they couldn't even spell their own names. I demand a re-count/protest/re-drive etc.
4. Tony Schibecci spun off and ruined my hot lap.
   This is true. I was on a flyer. I had three laps. The warm up, the hot one (yellow flagged) and a final lap (in lap). Sheesh!

The truth:

I don't have enough experience and did not have a enough time to really wring the neck of the thing. (ok, I suck)

The result:

My team (Dean Canto, Luke Ellery and me) finished 4th, and I was 5th in the media grouping. (Six teams contested the event- 6 V8 drivers, 6 go-karters and 6 media clowns.)

The Pics:

The Peter Brock foundation folks (Lewis Brock and Julie Bamford) were there and so too was one of Brocky's cars (an FX Holden from Goodwood 2006)

I apologised to team mate (I love saying that!) Dean Canto. He was cool with it. Phew.

The V8 boys get back to their roots.

The delightful Ms Caroline Page with your host (do I look rather fetching in my race suit?)

Tony Schibecci from SEN and I see each other at these sort of events. God knows why we do this sort of event though. We didn't exactly own the day!