It’s been a little while since my last blog and it’s been a time where I’ve spent more time watching car racing than I have doing it.
I finished the Ginetta season with HHC Motorsport in a media role, a strong finish to the year saw Charlie Robertson claim the Ginetta GT4 Supercup title and James Kellett and Lando Norris take second and third in the Ginetta Junior Championship respectively.
It was then time for the Ginetta Junior and Formula 4 Winter Series and again I attended the Snetterton round with HHC Motorsport. Well done to Jamie Caroline and Will Palmer for lifting their respective winter titles.
It was also rewarding to see Charlie Fagg make his debut in car racing. I’ve been working with Charlie throughout 2014 to help him prepare for the winter series so to see him on the grid and improving every time out was brilliant for me personally.
Next up was the Henry Surtees Foundation Karting event. Having met Henry at some kart meetings it has always been a charity I have been keen to support. Also, due to my love of motorbike racing John, Henry’s father, is an idol and racing hero of mine. It has been more than five years since I have driven a Kart on wet tires as all the karting I have done recently has been in slick shod hire karts.
I had a great time at the event eventually qualifying for the A Final after following Bobby Thompson home in 2nd in the B Final. My kart didn’t seem to have the straight-line speed that others did in the A Final (drivers excuses) so I wasn’t able to progress much but had some good battles with various people.
Coates, in kart #39, enjoyed competing in the Henry Surtees Foundation Karting Challenge – Credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography
An event that I have been involved with for the last two years is the PPiK 24 hour, an indoor endurance karting event in which teams raise money for Children In Need. I had been drafted into the Adaptive – Iconx team who once again did the job on the fundraising side of things and achieved £3,322.15 for a very worthy cause. That level of fundraising put the team in the top 3% of fundraisers via Just Giving in 2014. After 24 hours of hard racing we crossed the line in eighth place.
The next racing event was to fall in January and the Autosport Show International kicked off the racing season in style once again. I split my time between a couple of meetings in the show, working with the Stunt Drive Experience crew, including racing Celebrity Karting, and with Ginetta taking people for rides in the adrenaline zone (see the video below).
Giving passenger rides is such a thrill and it’s great to see the look on people’s faces as they jump in and out! The celebrity karting was another great event once again and we qualified tenth. I took the wheel in stint one and moved us into fifth. I couldn’t catch the leaders as red and yellow flags prevented me getting into the right position around backmarkers!
Whilst at University I have been helping to run the LBU Motorsport society and have competed in the British Universities Karting Championship (BUKC). The season started with the qualifiers at Whilton Mill where I enjoyed a second place finish in my first race. I then started from the back row of the grid for my second race to give the team the best overall result from the day. I climbed from 31st to 7th setting the fastest lap of day in the process. We then moved onto Rye House, a track I have never visited before, for the first round. My first race saw me start in 21st eventually finishing in 7th, again I’ve got on-board footage below.
So after talking about lots of karting and other motorsport related activities most of you that are still reading this are probably wondering what I am going to be racing this year… well quite honestly I don’t know yet.
We had been working on a big project for 2015 since August last year and it’s not quite all come together. We’re now working towards a slightly different goal and I hope that we will have some news soon. Once we have sorted things on a financial front then we will be able to ‘go to press’.
See you at a track soon,
Max
