Castle Combe Winter Championship 2023

Hello, it appears that I’m writing again. Apparently some people actually liked the last one so I’ve been encouraged to carry on. I know right, crazy! Today I thought I would write about my most recent karting championship, the Winter CCC (Castle Combe Championship).

When I started this championship, I honestly wasn’t expecting that much of myself. To be fair, I wasn’t planning on doing the winter CCC at all but after the announcement of the women’s specific Jamie Chadwick Trophy I thought “why not, may as well give it a go!”

So how does it work?

Well, the championship consists of 10 rounds, with your best performance over 6 rounds used to achieve your overall championship position. Each round has a practice session, followed by 4 heats where you will be starting in either 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th on the grid. For each heat your starting position is changed to try and make it fair for everyone. Your final position at the end of the heat gives you points, which will go towards your starting position in the day’s finals. There are on average 4 finals A, B, C and D. So, you are competing with people of a similar level to you. However, you can work your way up through to higher finals. If you place first or second in your final you can progress into the back of the next final up. So, in theory you can make up for a poor performance in the heats by doing really well in the finals but that’s usually easier said than done.

So, hopefully that makes sense… onwards? …

Walking into the first round I saw loads of new drivers and to my surprise a couple of new girls too (which was really cool). After chatting with a few people, it was onto practice. I came off feeling pretty good with my performance. Keeping this energy going, I achieved 1^st place in the B final. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hold on to it and I didn’t manage to get into the A final (frustratingly for the entire championship) but I still managed to come in 9^th which I was more than happy with. Considering I was placing 19^th, 18^th in the summer CCC.

Moving on to round 5. This round was special as I had some great support from Colin of Dunn Motorsports and Mark from Positive Perception. I also managed to finish this round with another 9^th position and was awarded driver of the day.

Round 6 was really frustrating and my worst result due to getting an unfortunate penalty and although the other drivers were just as confused as me, I was still stripped of my 1^st place in the heats and put all the way back into 4^th. Nothing could be done, so I decided to pick myself back up and concentrate on the remaining rounds. Anyway, it wasn’t so bad as I was approached by Vertice Racing to join their kart racing team, which was very exciting!

Unfortunately my luck on the track didn’t improve due to the wet weather. As we all know, rain with slick tires is a horrible mix. Luckily my new team mates were happy to lend a hand and helped me work on the wet line. Now I wouldn’t say I’m stubborn, ok maybe a little bit but trying to get myself to change my line was close to a nightmare. It was certainly getting better as time went on but as anyone who drives at Castle Combe knows the wet line at this track is drastic compared to others. It’s frustrating and just feels wrong!

I was improving in the wet conditions but so was everyone else, making fighting for places on the narrow track very hard and so I ended up in 13^th, 14^th and 17^th in the next 3 rounds.

Anxiously, I went into the 10^th and final round sitting in 3^rd position for the Jamie Chadwick Trophy. However, with support from my new team, a dollop of luck and that good old adrenaline kick, I managed to end the day and the championship in 2^nd for the Jamie Chadwick Trophy, 5^th in the Barnaby’s Trophy and 28^th overall in a championship field of 86 drivers. So, not all that bad in the end.

With a great end to the championship and my first competitive year in karting, I feel that I’m leaving juniors on a high and I’m really excited to progress to the adult entries for 2024.

I just quickly want to thank everyone for their support in my first year. It’s been great and I can’t wait to see what happens next! If you want to follow the journey and find out more, please feel free to follow me on Instagram, Facebook or my LinkedIn. Hope to catch you in the next one.