The early season testing was boosted by the introduction of new faces into the teams, including some who had never competitively raced on the motorsport scene before arriving at the University of Southampton, including driver and 2009-10 Vice Captain, Chris Parsloe.

The season’s opening race at the internationally acclaimed Whilton Mill Kart Track in Northamptonshire left the Southampton A Team in a strong position of 5th out of 61 teams. In his solo race Paul von Gerard went off from pole position to take a race win out of 29 laps by 0.513 seconds, and following this drivers David Hodge and Scott Michaels won by over 15 seconds in their endurance race, showcasing the top national standard of driving held by the team.

The second raceday of the season was at the famous Buckmore Park Track in Kent, the track at which Lewis Hamilton was notably found by McLaren ex-team boss, Ron Dennis. The racing for Southampton, unfortunately, returned no favours to both A and B Teams. A Team driver, Scott Michaels, and B Team driver, Matt Neuville, both produced top 10 finishes in their races in extremely testing conditions on a wet and drying track, where overall the A and B Teams finished in 21st and 27th positions respectively.

The next round was at Llandow in South-west Wales, where our Cardiff-based driver David Hodge lead the team to produce further top 10 finishes. Due to the Easter Holidays there were, however, a lack of Southampton drivers available for the round, resulting in a non-classified result for the B Team. This might be a suitable point to add that the Southampton Karting Team are always looking for drivers for pre-season testing, to allow them to race throughout the year, especially when numbers of drivers are low! So whether you’re a fit Jenson Button, an ice-cream eating Kimi Raikkonen or an extravagant Lewis Hamilton, let yourself be known!

The last round of the 2008/9 British University Karting Championships took us to our local track at Clay Pigeon Raceway, near Dorchester. Drivers Dave Watts, Chris Parsloe and Andrew Forrest shone in the dry conditions to allow both Southampton A and B teams to finish in a brilliant 12th position and a mid -championship placed 32nd position respectively.

The team will be looking for many new drivers next year due to the graduation and farewell of a lot of our drivers, so visit our facebook group ‘Southampton University Karting Championship’, or email pvg1v07@soton.ac.uk for further details. The trial for the Karting Team will occur in October at the Thruxton venue.