Go Carter Grother

04/11/2024

Capri Cup 2024 Cadet 12.

We had another big trip to Ipswich for a great opportunity to race at the Ipswich in the anti clockwise direction. Dad knew Alf Capri really well and I got to meet Maurine Capri on the weekend just before we had to leave. The stories dad has told me has made me realise how much these legends did for Go Karting.

We managed to get some practice in on Friday and we struggled at first but some help from Tom helped us get over one of our issues which was great of him. But we felt good heading into race day.

RACE DAY
We had qualifying straight up and managed to get a reasonable lap in and be placed 5th overall from the 25 drivers.

Heat 1 we started 5th and finished 4th in a fun race which we maintained the pace with the front pack and held the fastest time of the race.
Heat 2 we started 5th again and passed a few karts to cross the line 2nd
FINAL- we where keen to get into this race and so it seems others where also- maybe a little too keen as we had multiple red flag incidents which wasn’t good and hopefully my mate Blake is feeling better today. We also had virtual safety kart slow boards and after all the drama we finished 2nd to Olly and managed to keep a gap back to Brock.

A huge thank you to IKC and all the volunteers and especially the officials who give up their time to allow us to race.

In the lead up to the weekend I hurt my neck somehow and we managed to do the weekend with massages and deep heat which helped but I was exhausted with the hot conditions and big few days.

Then we proceeded onto Toowoomba for dad to work with his friends at GW racing for the USC series crewing for Q5 Brock Hallet.
We cheered on Brock who looked like winning only to get pipped at the end after an unfortunate restart.

So 2x Second place trophy’s was pretty cool. But we will work hard on the off season and hopefully upgrade to P1 trophies.

13/10/2024

Well it’s race week… much like every other week in the Grother household.. however this weekend will be slightly different with trading the kart for a car! It’s been a long time in the build but we are finally ready to give the dirt a crack.

Purchasing an old Datsun 1200 from Victoria earlier this year we saw a few fix up jobs before a wrap and seat fitting and now we have turned around 30 laps in some locally held practice nights at Mcosker Gladstone Speedway. No huge expectations but just looking to learn new skills, meet new people and most importantly having some fun and making memories.

None of this would have been possible without the very generous support of Truffle Pig Tannum Sands and the Truffle Pig food trailer catering for events around CQ including the tastiest tucker at Mcosker Gladstone Speedway events.

So come on out and check us out along with the Modlights and other Truffle Pig supported Junior cars this Saturday night and come say Hi!!

So Many Thanks to
-Pop for working so hard on rebuilding our trailer to transport the car to and from events
-Brodie Boss FT race gear
-Gladstone Auto Club for being so welcoming and helpful
-TRUFFLE PIG
-FASTKARTS
-Dondex

13/10/2024

Gladstone Kart Club - October 12th
Shell QGC Super Sprint (Bathurst weekend)

We raced our local club meeting which was supported by local industry Gas supplier Shell QGC and we had 5 others to race against which was great.
We had a qualifying type event which was great as I was able to put down a mega lap to go pole position for the 2 heat races.
Heat 1- starting pole position we raced to a nice gap and a good win.
Heat 2 - starting pole I decided I needed to better myself and dropped back behinds the entire field and tried chasing them down. This was a lot of fun and we almost did it. We got to 2nd and unfortunately my mate Cooper Radlof turned it around in the final section which brought out the yellows and I was unable to pass Cooper R but was loads of fun trying.

Heat 3- as I had so much fun in heat 2 I wanted to give it another go, unfortunately I gave them too much of a lead as I bogged the kart when I waved the field through. Anyway I put my head down and just went for it. Cooper R did a great job and I couldn’t quite catch him in time. So it was another P2. But we did beat our PB x2 and had a great race with all the other drivers.

Final - we just had to get to the front and go as we knew all the other cadet drivers had massive improvement over the day and I still wanted to go under the 35 second mark for a lap time. We raced away and build a good gap but fell just short of the time I set as a goal. Even if it was by just 0.03 of a second. But we were happy to claim another win.

Another fun meeting and a big thank you to the club and special mention to Shell QGC for giving the club a grant to install solar power to our facility. This helps our little club out a lot.

Thank you everyone for the support.
Photo credits - Image Box sports photography

13/10/2024

We have been so busy racing that we have just not had time to post our results. We have been working hard behind the scenes on a new venture but that’s coming later…

Race recap. Ipswich club Championships Rnd 7
October 5th
It was a boys weekend in the bus down to Ipswich with some much needed component and engine testing on the Thursday and Friday before the Saturday event.

Testing went great, we tried some new sodi components and found some new directions for setups coming into the hotter months.

Race day- random grid draws have us a starting p25 and racing up to p13 through some hectic laps with karts of various speeds spread across the field.
Heat 2 starting p4 and racing away with the leader to finish p2.
Heat 3 starting p5 and a pretty steady follow the leader race to finish p4 but amongst the fastest times on track have us good confidence for the final.

Final time - a good start and keeping with the leader breakaway pack and holding steady until the final lap where the leaders went defensive and we where able to capitalise on the karts bunching up in the final series of turns to come across the line 3rd.

Our best result as a cadet 12 at Ipswich and really happy with our weekend. Big thanks to Pop and Dad for taking me away and giving me the best chance of winning.

02/07/2024

Well the Qld Championships have been won and run on the weekend at Ipswich Kart Club. We as a team had some moments of speed and some moments of frustration with variable conditions and some just plain mistakes.

In the lead up we have been focusing on helping our local regional clubs with numbers and trying to keep seat time. However with the huge amount of grip at Ipswich and the very different conditions at Gladstone and Rockhampton. This has hurt us in our driving technique going from extremely slippery to very grippy racetracks. However we are very happy to take this learning from this experience. Ending the first 2 sessions well short of our expectations we needed to get back to what we knew of winning races at Ipswich needed.

Some positive talks with Dad and Pop on the engines and we found ourselves just outside the top half. We qualified 22nd overall with an average session with some bad placement but would make the best of what we had and give us a P12 starting spot for the heats.
Heat1 - Finishing P6
Heat2 - Finishing P5
Heat3 - Starting P12 Finishing P9
Final- Starting P11 - Although we had a good start we got shuffled a bit with some hard racing with others back a few positions however keeping pushing we would make it back a few spots back.

Crossing the line in 10th was a good improvement from qualifying P22 and finding some improvements was very satisfying. In the end we where part of the lead bunch group but we understand we need to keep pushing for further successes.

We did have a very nice pit setup which was very comfortable for the weekend which was nice to work from.

Now we get ready for our speedway debut in a junior sedan in the coming weeks. So get ready for the big launch of that one!!

But there will be more kart races soon enough.

As always a huge thank you to all the people that keep the wheels turning on the 42 machine and the officials for the Qld titles, fellow drivers and especially my family for everything they do.

11/06/2024

Australian Karting Championships Round 3 - Emerald Qld

Our closest round for the Australian Karting Championship rolled into Emerald over the 31 May to the 2nd of June. Still 400km from home.
Having a great experience in the opening round only to strike some troubles in around 2 we were keen to make amends to our Championship campaign and get some much needed points again.

Setup day was nice to see our friends and family of the KartClass tent and get our track walks done with 18 time Australian Champion Dave Sera and Louis and going straight into practice was nice knowing we had a good starting package in the SODIKART/Growler tuned 60cc VORTEX MINIROK.

FP1 - the track was slightly dusty and was just good to get a feel for the track and measure the rate of grip that would come to the track with almost 400 karts at the event. Finishing P18 in our group.

FP2 - the track wasn’t gaining as much grip as we had liked so our setup was slightly complicated and we would keep working on our driving lines finishing P14 in the faster of the 2 groups overall.

FAST Friday had arrived to a cool morning and being one of the first categories for FP3 on track we would experiment with setup and in the closing stages the changes Dad had put into the kart worked nicely moving us up to P9 overall giving us a great spot for the final practice.

FP4 some more setup changes to the chassis and again practised positioning for qualifying and netting a good overall time and some more valuable data to tune the kart too. Dave and Luis where certainly busy keeping us rolling to keep getting faster. Finishing P6 overall

QUALY - getting the ever important tow was critical to get the best laptime and unfortunately we just couldn’t get behind the right person for the best advantage but we still where happy with 16th overall and putting us 8th on the grid for the heat races. It was extremely close and finding .18 of a second would have taken us to the front row.

Race 1 - And then the RAIN came… starting p8 we quickly moved up to P4 and set about the leaders but simply running out of laps we where happy to bring the kart home in 3rd.

Race 2 - Disaster on the roll up lap (again in the wet) with a spin coating is badly and not being able to get back into our starting position of 8th,,, we had to settle for P26. And when the green light we put the head down and charged through to P6 in the challenging conditions even with a cheeky overtake on the final corner of the Series points leader.

Race 3 - further disaster… a poor start from P8 left us almost at the rear of the pack again and despite my best efforts we got caught up with some slower karts causing my chain to drop off and suffer our 2nd DNF for the series.

Race 4- with very up and down points we started P16 and despite grappling several spots off the start but getting one of them corners down the straight instances moved us to P21 with a full spin at high speed and just chipped away moving forward and being careful not to take any unnecessary risks for a finishing position of P16

Final - under lights and in the wet!! - and with much anticipation we started P24 and after a disappointing few opening corners found ourselves again towards the rear of the field in P36 but with the same determined approach we took the challenge of moving forward and making the best of what we could. Passing a bunch of karts and taking a few risks on a drying track. 16 laps was the race distance and with karts spreading out very quickly made it tough to keep chasing the karts in front. But we finished P16 on track (passing 20 karts in 16 laps was so much fun) and after penalties handed out we where classified as 12th in the standings from the 52 of Australia’s finest cadet drivers.

A huge thank you to our partners and supporters.
Pop & Granny - Growler Race Engines
Grandma & Poppy E
Sodikart Australia
Kart Class
FASTKARTS
Mum & Dad
The officials of Karting Australia
The Emerald Kart club
PACE images for amazing work
Friends and Family that came out to watch me race.

11/06/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/F7sxMEGX6MbNeEsm/?mibextid=WC7FNe

Oh my goodness!!! Will anybody have a chance now? His lead is becoming unsalable. Go Carter Grother!

26/02/2024

Well the 2024 Australian Championships campaign kicked off on the weekend. It’s been a few mad weeks of preparation after a long off season. Dad and Poppy Eryol left on Monday and 2800km later we flew into Adelaide for our first practise at 1pm Thursday.

We really struggled in practise with getting ourselves a little baffled with tricky track conditions and extreme heat of 37 degrees. Friday was our 2nd practise day and it wasn’t great to start with having to work our way from the back half of the bottom 50% of drivers. Dad made some changes to the Sodikart and improved a lot bringing us to the back of the top 30.

Qualifying was next and we tried really hard and managed 17th overall and putting us into 9th position for the heat races in group A.

Heat race 1 - started 9th and got a great start to pop out the first corner in 4th and later in the race progress toward to 2nd for our best ever cadet 12 place in a serious race.

Heat race 2 - was a huge crash in turn 1 with 21 karts getting rammed from behind causing more than half the field to be sitting on the infield with a mess of karts everywhere. And our first DNF as a cadet 12 also.

Heat race 3 - was a very strategic race with needing to finish a priority and still gather points which was very difficult given we had good pace and coming home 10th.

Sunday was going to be much warmer conditions for the finals and starting the 4th heat race from 13th and driving up to 6th which was great.

The Final was going to be tough and starting from 13th position we would again have to be strategic and be well placed for a longer race. After a great start and quickly getting to 8th before a few little errors caused us to run off the track and hand back a few spots and eventually bring the KartClass Sodikart home in 15th.

Now we really only thought we would be setting a goal of making the final, however we far exceeded that by making the top 15 and amongst the fastest lap times of some of the heats.

Huge thanks must to to
Mum & Dad
Grandma Mary and Pop for travelling with us.
Granny and Poppy Neil for the engine power.
Dave Sera and his team at KartClass
Liam & Lewis
Sagidac Family
Sodikart Racing Australia
6Star Helmets

Huge thank you to the Championships series partners, organisers, volunteers, SA Southern kart club members, officials and other drivers and teams.

Roll on to the Victoria State Championships in a few weeks.
👍

31/12/2023

2023 was a blast. We started the year off with a nice break over the Christmas period last year and came out swinging at the Ipswich kart club Cadet Titles which was the debut of the Sodi ASC 950 Furia cadet chassis. Being the only Sodi cadet chassis in mainstream racing it’s always nice to beat the more common brands and also being from Central Queensland has made it slightly more difficult to find a package we don’t need to change much yet still remain fast. We dominated the cadet titles which was our first trophy at Ipswich.. which is an achievement in its self.
The remainder of the year was focused on a good program for AKC. We partnered with Dave Sera’s team after learning from the KartClass program and enjoyed the process Dave gave us to work with and can’t recommend his online learning platform enough to learn from.
We did some shakedowns and had success and found our flaws for improvement.
Round 1 - Adelaide - We recorded our first heat AKC win
And lead majority of the final until a few corners to go and slipped back to 3rd for a nice podium. 🥉
Round 2 - Perth - With huge thanks to the McDougall family for setting us up with another beautiful Sodikart we managed to qualify average but push forward with Dave’s help with race raft and start the final from just outside the top ten and cross the line 4th but received 3rd after tech.. however being in 2nd on the final lap and pushed back made it slightly better than going home empty handed with another 3rd place trophy. 🥉
Round 3 - Newcastle - We started beautifully with a nice pole position and strong heat races and despite leading the entire final with exception of the last 80m we learnt a valuable lesson that day that will remain long into our racing journey. 2nd place is still a nice result 🥈
Round 4 - Ipswich - we still travel 7 hours by car each month to race here but the rewards of the hard work is shown with great heat results and dominating the final to cross the line 1st was shortly crushed by missing a tech measurement by 0.02 of a mm in a critical measurement due to oil and carbon buildup. Another valuable lesson of resilience and determination. Determination certainly showed in the City of Melbourne titles as a Final Cut short due to a red flag gave us a win and set us up with good confidence prior to the final AKC round for 2023 thé few weeks following in Melbourne.
Round 5 - Melbourne - Sadly it was the round we didn’t want to have with a strange scenario of lack of pace and inconsistent feedback gave us a challenging result with a final race finish necessary to secure 3rd in the Championship but unfortunately it wasn’t to be the case with a DNF gave us as a 4th overall but we certainly can’t be unhappy as we learnt a lot and made some great memories and have friends we will have for many years to come. Huge thanks to Dave and the team from KartClass
Harrison Family
Mercury Family
Growler Race engines - Pop
FASTKARTS
Sodikart
Xzuit
Pace Images - thank you for the images.
Karting officials and organisations
Friends and family from Gladstone Qld
And we certainly look forward to some more racing in 2024 but remaining to remember the values of what we are here for of Fun - Friends - Learning how to drive.
Here are some pictures of what we have to take away from it all.

04/06/2023

Well that’s round 3 of the Australian Kart Championships done and dusted from Newcastle.
A good show of speed in Friday Practice lead to our first Australian Championships Pole Position which was a huge result with a final lap .2 of a second clear of everyone.
Heat 1 - finishing P2
Heat 2 - finishing P2
Heat 3 - Winner
Heat 4 - Winner
The 16 lap final was a nail biter with a good start and a breakaway of 2 karts it was a case of build a gap then see what happens and with the finish line in sight a small gap saw another kart slip through taking 2nd by 0.06 of a second. Still stoked with the result and a huge haul of championship points it was always going to be tough to be so close. Roll on to Ipswich for our next event.
Here are some amazing pictures captured by Pace images. Thank you Ben for your amazing work.

Thank you
Sodikart for the beautiful material,
Growler Engines - Pop for nice HP
KartClass AKC team - Dave And George and the amazing people who all chip in.
All the supporters back home in Central Qld.