Tuesday 13 March 2012

The Series' explained...

‘Chase the Ace’ is the brainchild of Ben Hershbein at Teamsport Bristol, which ran as a series of one-off races towards the end of 2011. The format was a five minute Practice session in order to familiarize yourself with your allocated kart, followed by a ‘One lap’ qualifying session where everyone had just a single opportunity to set a lap time using the same kart, which then decided the grid for the forty-five minute race.

I managed to finish second in each of these races, unfortunately being beaten each time by a guy named Luke John who is very quick and also about half my size, so generally I was satisfied with my performances. Overall, the standard of driving is pretty high as its  ‘Members Only’ which means the people taking part tend to be a little more dedicated than the people you usually encounter at ‘Arrive and Drive’ type sessions. One aspect which always makes things interesting was the lack of Blue flag rules, which meant when the leader came up to lap the field, they didn’t have get out of the way, and it was up to the driver at the front to make his way through without losing too much time. This usually meant there was opportunity to anybody following closely behind to catch up. This shouldn’t necessarily be the case, as really you should let the leader through, but it does make for some interesting racing as the guys at the back fight tooth and nail for every position.

In 2012, the format was rolled out across each Teamsport track, with a new points scoring system introduced over five rounds, with the winner of each round becoming the ‘Ace’ and gaining free entry to the next race, with a discount entry for the second and third placed drivers. Fifteen points are awarded to the winner, fourteen for second place, Third gets thirteen, fourth twelve etc



The British Rental Kart Championship (BRKC) was created by Palmersport instructor and Red Bull Kart fight champion Bradley Philpot. The definition of Rental Karting is quite simply, organised racing, using the four stroke karts provided and used by different circuits.

The series does not own or maintain its own fleet of karts. Nor does it use exactly the same type of kart at each race. The karts used in the championship are the same fleet that is used by each circuit for their own arrive and drive sessions and their corporate races (albeit normally specifically performance checked and equalised as much as possible immediately before each BRKC round). This is how the BRKC are able to keep costs so low for competitors.

The BRKC is regarded as the highest level of Rental Karting in the UK, due to an
extremely competitive field of drivers, a professionally presented championship - as
well as the unrivalled prizes provided by the series.