WKA Race Event at New Castle, Brownsburg , Indiana
15 and 16 July 2017
Racing with Patrick Karting Team, this was a good beginning, branching out to new ventures for Team Target Racing.
Heading the team was Fabienne Lanz , racing in the X30 Senior category.
Fabienne likes the challenges of new tracks, a different kart and an engine she has never raced before and Tyre compound that is much softer to what she is used to. Not only in stages, she combines them all into one package and always proves she is in it to win it as she was matching the top guys’ times on both race days.
X30 Senior is a self tune carburettor kart that Fabienne has not driven since the 100cc PCR engine days. Some people see as older days karting, or OK ( stands for Original Karting) which seems to making its way back into the karting scene. Mastering carburettor settings are key to having the engine at its top performance at all times during the race.
TJ Patrick, Danica’s father heads up the Patrick Karting team and is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Capital of Motorsport.
It took 2 days to get used to the new environment set ups, the grip levels are much higher due to the Bridgestone tyres, which is something Fabienne always loved. But not being used to this, made it quite challenging. Saturday we were ready for raceday.
Heat one of the day was going quite well until the chain unlodged itself and Fabienne was forced to retire. This caused her to start at the back of the field for heat two.
She made her way through the field in a short 8 lap race finishing in 11th position with 3rd quickest laptime.
For the final Fabienne started in 13th position and fought her way up into 6th position.
New Castle has proven over and over that slip stream is key. The front pack of 5 were all slip streaming eachother and Fabienne was on her ace closing the gap one corner at a time. A backmarker unfortunately ended the chances of reaching the front group so Fabienne finished in 6th place.
Onto Sunday’s race and the engine’s performance dropped something Fabienne was concerned about on Saturday after the last heat. The power out of the corners was just a little less and Sunday’s race became harder to chances of winning the Final. None the less, Fabienne mixed it up all day in Pre final she finished 5th.
For the Final, they went a tad too low on pressures, so the kart took some more laps to get to the correct grip level.
Going into the last corner Zach Holden’s chain dislodged and Fabienne had nowhere to go except drive into the back of Zach and lost the tow to the front 4. Again on her own, she could not close the gap to the front guys and settled for 5th position.
All in all a great experience and a very good finish for the new variables she had on her plate.