RabócsiRing, Hungary
August 2018

After a few months of training in Vechec, Slovkia on the T1 Ring, exploring the go-kart and getting to know awesome people, I ended up in my historically first ever race outside of Slovakia, in neighboring Hungary on RabócsiRing circle. The circle is located near the famous and favorite Nyíregyház city and for someone from East Slovakia, an ideal second place after Vechec where we can go to make have some fun with go-karts.

This place is also great for many other activities while karting is more-less still in its beginnings and the rules reflect this. Those are nowhere near as strict as, for example, on Slovak Karting Cup (later as, SLOKAP), because these races are more for fun than professional racing. Anyway, this race is organized several times during the year (9 races are planned just for 2019) and of course, at the end of the year, they summarise the overall results. When it comes to rules, basically, anything goes, so the settings of engine and others stuff, such as any kind of tires, the weight of racer with a go-kart is not limited either, etc.. Riders are divided into categories by, basically, the power of the engine and based on that I was in the shifters category, so a category where go-karts are able to shift gears. The circuit is wide and fast, so one of my favorite circuits, because is possible to ride on many racing lines and there are many options on how to overtake.

After the Friday afternoon training, the next morning I was undergoing registration, where I didn't catch my favorite number which is 9, so, I picked number 7 - the same as Kimi Räikkönen has in his Formula 1. The race started with some training and after these, there were two qualifying rounds. During the qualifying, I ended up third and I started thinking that I'm actually very close to my first ever race in Karting in my life.

Being quite different from SLOKAP, on RabócsiRing the start is usually not from a place. It means, that we are starting with a warm-up lap, then a forming lap and then, after the starting flag is waved, the race starts. Shame for me that I didn’t manage to catch this moment well, so I stayed on the same gear for a long time and I lost lots of power. Because of that, I lost two places on the grid. During the race, I managed to climb back by one place after my opponent made mistake to the fourth position on which I managed to stay until the end of the race of the first final round. I started from the fourth position again to the second round which is different to SLOKAP where we are starting both final rounds from the same position which the riders reached during the qualifying rounds.

The second round was a little bit better but still, I didn't manage to catch the start correctly. This time was enough for me to stay on position from the start and after a small mistake by my opponent on the apex of turn I jumped forward to the third place which I kept till the end of the race. I was really happy from my previous as well as this result but I had no idea, where I will end up overall until the very end. Finally, I ended up on the fourth place because I had exactly the same points for two rounds as my opponent, so, better qualifying time decided that my opponent was better than me. Congratulations to the winner and also to other riders, I'm very happy, that we had a lot of fun & interesting moments with a group of people. Without them, I can't imagine how I'd be able to be on this race all the training sessions and races in SLOKAP too. Big thank you, guys!