Last night the Chichester Design team were out in force at TeamSport in Gosport, Hampshire. We have all been working so hard this year that Ben decided we deserved a fun-packed treat so he booked us a team racing extravaganza. It was all about strategy, pit stops and teamwork, with the team who completed the most laps taking the chequered flag and winning the prestigious (?) plastic cup.
We believe in equal opportunities so although Kate was invited to take part in the racing shenanigans she decided against it in case she was better than boys and hurt a few egos. So in her place her other half Pete raced for team Chi Design with Managing Director Ben, Senior Web Developer Jeremy and Web Designer Simon.
Once Kate and Pete arrived halfway through the briefing (thanks to Ben’s wonderful directions courtesy of GoogleMap and the iPhone- seriously two of our best techy tools failed at the first hurdle!) the team was at last united. The boys donned their fetching overalls and Ben took to the pit lane to give team ten’s kart a practice lap. After each of the boys had their turn at getting the hang of the kart and the 450m track consisting of nine corners and a rather fun looking bridge it was time for some serious racing.
Kate cheered the boys on as they each sped against the likes of Nelson’s Gang, Chamber Maid, Bognor Boys, Jackson 5, Chamber Pot, Fix Its, Chamber Music, BPL Racing, Captain Slow, A Star Scaffolding and my personal favourite (apart from Chi Design of course)- De’ath.
Ben was up first, starting in eighth position and sneaking up to second place, although it seems he used a few dirty tactics that got us our first yellow flags and he was well on his way to getting us a black flag with a 30 second time penalty when we took a wise team decision to get Simon on the track. Simon gave it his all but he couldn’t quite keep us in the top spots (mainly because he didn’t go to the Ben school of cheating!) Jeremy took over and gave it some French VaVaVoom and regained us a couple of places. Then Pete stepped in (albeit after he’d taken his time getting his helmet and gloves on while the Kart sat there cooling in the pit lane) but he did manage to achieve the team’s fastest time so we’ll forgive him.
After the boys had around 25 minutes each on the track they all went round one final time for 15 minutes each. But we were levelling at between seventh and tenth place and didn’t manage to climb the leader board again. The race came to a halt at 10.45, after two and half hours of non-stop racing fun and we passed the finishing line in a fairly respectable ninth place out of twelve (well, it wasn’t last and remember it’s the taking part that counts!) Well done team Chi Design!
Here’s some race stats for all you Karting fans:
Location: TeamSport, Fareham Reach, Gosport, Hampshire
Contenders (in no particular order): Chi Design, Nelson’s Gang, Chamber Maid, Bognor Boys, Jackson 5, Chamber Pot, Fix Its, Chamber Music, 3 BPL Racing, Captain Slow, A Star Scaffolding, De’ath
Race time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Musical accompaniment: The Prodigy
Winning team: 3 BPL Racing
Fastest lap: 29.578 seconds (A Star Scaffolding)
Average lap time: 31 seconds
Chi Design laps completed: 229
Chi Design fastest lap time: 30.410 seconds
Chi Design final position: 9/12
To see a running commentary of the race follow us on Twitter and read Kate’s Tweets from last night as she cheered the Chichester Design boys on.
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