British Karting Championship

The British Karting Championships (Super 1) are the pinnacle of the sport within the UK. In order to cater for as many classes as possible, the championship is split into the various karting classes including Rotax and TKM. I competed in the TKM 4 Stroke class for 4 years, with 2009 being my most successful year as the 6th seed. To this day, Super 1 remains one of the most exciting championships. Whether this is because this was the path that Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton took on their way to F1, I’m not sure, but these weekends always had a great atmosphere.

In order to try and maintain a level playing field, the British Championships have much tighter regulations. For example control fuel and brand new control tyres were compulsory for every meeting. Fuel testing was a regular feature of post race checks along with stripping down already sealed engines. The TKM 4 Stroke class never attracted budgets as high as the Rotax classes, however to win at British Championship level you had to have the best equipment. Those who could afford to buy multiple engines would always have an advantage. We had three TKM engines, one of which was saved only for racing. It is this sort of thing which made the Championship extremely hard, but also meant that budget was always going to be a limiting factor to success for a lot of competitors.