Team RBB revealed

Follow-up to A return to motorsport from Syncspeed

I posted yesterday about RBB Economics Racing's attack on the Club 100 Intermediate championship. Here's a rundown of the team's three drivers.

Dan works for RBB Economics; his company is sponsoring the team's efforts this year to a modest degree, hence our team name. I met Dan three years ago – he was at Warwick on a one-year postgraduate course in 2002/03 and raced in the BUKC on a couple of occasions.

Since then, Dan has done a few Club 100 events, including a full season with Club 100 (in their now-dead City Challenge championship). Two of those races were with me as his team-mate: we came second and fifth, the former being his best result towards an overall third place. The winners of that year's championship are now racing in the Premier class.

Dan's probably a tenth or two per lap quicker than me around most circuits, but not always as keen to take a risk in traffic. It kind of balances out.

I got to know Pete through BUKC too: he captained Kingston's uni team last year. Kingston had a reputation within the championship for being a bit nuts, very fun-loving, and always up for a laugh. That said, they had some very quick drivers, Pete included. Pete nearly won his first BUKC sprint race the same day I did, but ended up winning a couple of weeks later - although perhaps it should have been me that race again!

I'm not sure exactly what level of experience Pete has, but I know he's also done a fair bit of racing in twin-engine prokarts. This has included a couple of Kingston's races at the legendary 24 hour race held at Spa-Francorchamps' kart track, and some other successes too.

Pete's definitely our quickest and most consistent driver, even if it wasn't him who set the best time at our recent test session.

And then there's me! Not really having done any racing before uni, I found myself to be quick in indoor karts (helped by my low weight) and in outdoor prokarts etc, including a good showing at the 2003 Varsity prokart meeting. This wasn't reflected in my early Club 100 experience though: 8 seconds off the pace at a cold and damp test day at Buckmore, and several spins in both my races of the 2003 season.

2004 started with a race alongside Dan (mentioned above) and a good second place against Loughborough's finest at a pre-BUKC event. My four BUKC rounds that year were still poor, with no top-10 finishes and a few more spins, but my pace was improving – thanks in part to buying my own helmet and a seat insert which stopped me being thrown around when cornering, dramatically improving my "feel" for what the kart was doing.

The '05 BUKC season saw me up another three steps in terms of pace. I won a race and was a regular A-team driver. I also helped win the BUKC O-Plate race for Warwick, which allows us to use 0 as our race number this year, and drove Warwick's incredibly fast Formula Student car in competition. After setting RBB's quickest time at our test session this month, I'm looking forward to showing some speed and picking up even more in the coming season.

: 24 Feb 2006 14:13 |  Tags: Karting Motorsport Rbb |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem