11 Apr 2024
I went yesterday while on holiday with my parents. We booked online which was straightforward and arranged free pick up from our hotel, which was definitely a plus. When we arrived, we were surprised to learn that there were no karting suits to wear over the top of our clothes. Most people were wearing shorts and short sleeves and considering that the fastest karts do 65kph, if you come flying off then you would get very hurt. There were no gloves either and the helmets were battered, and the visors scratched and you couldn't see out of them properly. When we made it into the pits, they didn't give me the kart that I had booked but we paid extra so that I could. When I got in it, the kart was lopsided and the steering wheel was wonky. When we got going, the kart had so little grip that I was skidding around at every corner, almost coming off. I wasn't able to go at the speeds I would have usually done for fear of coming off. One time I spun around and this messed up the steering, which was pulling so much to the left that I had to really wrestle with it to the right to keep the kart going straight. I slowly went back to the pits when I realised that the tyre was also shredded with flaps hanging off. To their credit, they let me go in an instructor's kart for the last lap, but it stalled randomly when I was finishing a turn and I went off onto the grass and had to brake. Overall rather disappointing, and I'm just glad we came home in one piece.