By TBHS | Posted: Wednesday October 28, 2015
On 16th and 17th of October, a team of Year 12 students took part in the South Island Grass Kart Challenge at King’s High School in Dunedin.
The team consisted of AJ Mackenzie (Captain), Tom
Page (Chief Engineer), Max Goodwin (record keeper), Benji
McKay (Engineer) and Shaun Barclay (odd jobs and sound
effects).
The team arrived at King’s for pre-judging and presentation at 3:30pm on the Friday. Their Grass Kart had some minor issues which they corrected to be allowed to compete early on the Saturday morning. They also needed Mr Johnson and Mr Pitcher to go and buy a new kill switch which they broke before being ready!
Thankfully, due to heavy rain, the competition start time was put back to 10:30am which allowed the team to correct their issues and take part in a full day’s competition.The morning saw the team compete well in both the sprint and slalom rotations. This was despite issues with the brakes, throttle and the chain coming off at one point. In the afternoon, two 2nd places in the racing heats saw them gain a top eight placing.
Unfortunately they missed their semi-final race due to their attempts to improve the kart performance which saw them break their throttle yet again!
Coming 8th out of 15 was a fair result for the team who all thoroughly enjoyed the competition. Shaun lived up to his sound effect title by making car sounds on the return trip to Timaru.
