Racing at the Riverwalk Grand Prix last year was my first adventure in owner karting. Of course, I picked one of the hardest tracks to drive on as a rookie. Because this track is a street circuit, here, there isn't any run off so if you make a mistake, you are straight in the barriers. Sadly, that happened to me in the pre-final of the LO206 senior class.
That weekend had its ups and downs. A driver named Nic Bailey helped us put chains back on after we had issues with them. My team was super grateful for the help from fellow racers who understood the privateer struggle.
A huge rainstorm hit that weekend and we had no enclosed trailer so we just had to cover the kart by ourselves. Friday during practice I noticed that our engine was severely underpowered and later during the offseason figured out the reason. Both the piston and the cylinder were severely warped. But I didn't know that during the race.
The weather also affected the race. The sun came out hard on Saturday. The temperature went from 80 degrees on Friday, to 95 on Saturday and we weren't prepared for that kind of heat.
Heading into the final, my kart was beat up with a different engine, and didn't do half bad in the morning session until that afternoon, when the qualifying and pre-final started up. Suffering from heat stroke made me make mistakes in the pre-race A final. Put it into the barrier off of turn 2. Had to retire the kart with a lap to go for safety reasons. My kart was so slow I was too big of an obstacle for the other drivers.
Despite the setbacks, the Riverwalk Grand Prix taught me more about racing in one weekend than months of practice ever could. It's one thing to drive fast on a forgiving track — it's another to battle mechanical failures, extreme heat, and zero margin for error on a street circuit. That weekend didn't break me. It made me hungrier.