Well, the karting season is over for another year. It’s been a funny old season really. Towards the end of the 2005 Inters season we finished on the podium twice and we were really starting to challenge for race wins. Prior to that I wouldn’t have really counted myself as someone who was usually in contention of a podium, but there I was, part of a team finishing 4th, 3rd and then 2nd. No race win though. We should have won that last race in 2005, but I spent too much time doing piroettes.

In my “Expectations for 2006″ on the In it to Bin It website I said

I think we’ll be grabbing a couple of podiums again towards the end of the year.

I honestly believed that, after all, we’d finished 4th in Inters and surely moving up to the next class meant getting a decent result was going to be hard work. The first few races of the season seemed to confirm that. There were signs that we were improving though.

In May came Spa – I think Spa, more than anything, helped us improve. Finishing 2nd in Clubman to IMSD, who had prior experience of track and format (well, doing 10 hours of karting in a weekend) was a great achievement for the whole team.

From then on, we were always in the hunt. At Clay, the very next round we finished 3rd, at Lydd we came very close to chasing down IMSD for 3rd and at Llandow we won! Could a championship charge be on? Unfortunately not, for the rest of the season we lots of problems.

At Whilton Mill the bumper fell off and we didn’t handle it well, at Rye I went off on the 2nd lap for the first time all season and at Buckmore Park tricky conditions and a slower driver sent John off the track. True, in the mean time we did acheive an excellent win at Bayford Meadows – which is the race I think I did my best driving at all season. At the end of it all though, we were 4th in the championship.
The season was a mix of exceeding expectations and disappointment – if at the start of the season you’d told me we would win two races and finish 4th I probably would have taken it, but after Spa and the two wins I feel we deserved more. I guess the key is that next year we have to start the season well, so that if we do have problems that aren’t of our own making later in the year we have good results to fall back on. If we go into those later races needing a result it just puts pressure on.

I couldn’t fault the team or the racing itself though. John, Alex and Jules have worked hard all year and the quality of the racing in Premiers has been absolute top notch. I couldn’t fault it. In it to Bin It are going to be 2007 Clubman Champions.