It's now been a few weeks since the inaugural '6 Hours of TeamSport Bristol' endurance race, & I've only now really started to feel like being a part of the winning team was a success. This is mostly due to the way that the race ended, with a kamikaze move & contact with my competition on the very last corner of the race- but at the end of the day I realised its still a victory, in certainly the longest & hardest race I've ever taken part in.

After the race had finished, I said that if all of the incidents & things had happened on the first lap rather than the last, it wouldn't even be a point of discussion, & that over the course of the six hours we all had our 'moments' of bad luck but also of good fortune- & I want to explore some of those if's, but's & maybe's here;

So, I guess first of all, would Martin & I have won if the guy who was in third at the end of the race realised he wasn't fighting for position with Zac & just let him past? Answer; No, Zac would probably have won on pure pace alone, he had enough laps to catch me & I was near-enough finished at that stage.

My counter-argument; If I hadn't let Zac unlap himself so easily in the first place, would he have been a position to fight for the victory in the end? Probably not, & in hindsight even if I'd held him up for a couple of laps, it would have been enough.

Next, would Zac, Krystian & Andy have won if they hadn't received a black flag & the subsequent penalty early in the race. Well, possibly, but that was of their own doing. Martin & myself were lucky ourselves to only get two 'warnings' during the race & therefore not receive any penalties for on-track incidents. We did serve a penalty of swapping karts during a driver-change, which was deemed to have gained us an unfair advantage, just to clear that up!

Would I have had an easier time of things if I hadn't firstly had a minor accident with a back-market earlier in the race (costing me around 5 seconds with a half-spin) & then also getting stuck behind Aaron Smith & Michael Peach in the closing stages? During that final stint of the race, I lost 15 seconds over a few laps, which allowed Zac (who had already un-lapped himself) to close right in on me. Again, if I'd had as easy time as Zac did passing these guys as the end of the race drew near, I'd have probably had a winning margin of at least a few seconds rather than 4/10ths.

With all that being said & done, I still need to tip my hat to Zac & Krystian, who both had incredible pace during very long stints, as well as Oliver Bayani (& his teammate Dutch) for grabbing the fastest lap of the race. Andy George also gets a mention for being a paint min the ass but also a completely fair racer! In a straight fight, these guys (the youngsters that is) are just on another level in terms of pure pace, but anyone will tell you that a race of this kind is about putting all the pieces together, & minimising the damage that these 'uncertainties' can do to your chances. At the end of the day, that is what Martin & I were able to do, & that is what allowed us to take the win.

After all, It's only a bit of fun, right?! 

Ben