Oscar Piastri - IAME World Finals, Day 4
| 18 October 2014 |
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OSCAR PIASTRI - X30 JUNIOR CATEGORY
IDEAL KARTING TEAM - KOSMIC KART - IAME X30 ENGINE
Report for Friday, 17th October 2014
- Previous updates on the Remo Racing website http://www.remoracing.com.au
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- LIVE Streaming for final this Sunday 19th October http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x27tkvn_finales-internationales-x30-le-mans-2014_sport
- LIVE Timing http://www.savoiechrono.com
Oscar Piastri reporting LIVE for Remo Racing from the IAME International Final, Le Mans France
DAY 4
When we arrived at the track this morning it was still very wet. Our warmup session was on rain tyres and the track was slowly starting to dry.
Above: (L to R) Alex Baten (mechanic), Oscar Piastri, Chris Piastri (dad), Frank Cancelli (Ideal Karting Team boss)
For our first heat there was a dry line on the track but off the racing line was still damp and greasy, overtaking would be difficult.
My goal for this first race was to learn the starting procedure and have a clean race.
The start procedure is two roll around laps and then a very, very slow approach to the acceleration line, the red lights are on like formula one and when they go out the race is on!
It seems like a very fair system as there are two lanes that you must stay in or get an instant penalty. If you are not in your position before the start bad luck for you because they don't wait.
A few races were started with drivers half a lap back from the formation because of late starting or other problems.
Anyway, I got a pretty good start for the race and was in about 6th place. I tried to pass someone but we kind of squeezed each other and it slowed us both down a lot so the following drivers caught and passed us.
Then another driver almost spun after some contact and as they came back across the track in front of me I got pushed wide and passed by another driver.
From there I held my position and finished 9th, not as good as I'd hoped but at least I finished.
The kart was a little bit loose in the rear but we didn't change the setup because the track would continue to improve.
For the second heat the track was dry, but we still hadn't seen the sun yet and it was pretty cold.
Again I got a decent start but on the chicane at the exit of turn one of the drivers ahead of me had a huge moment through the sand and it felt like a whole bucket of sand was thrown at me.
Above: Oscar with his team mate from Switzerland, Lucas Légeret
My visor and helmet were brown and later after the race I would see that pretty much the whole front of the kart and me was brown with sand and mud!
I lost a couple of positions during the next lap or so as the tyres cleaned up again. I was in 9th or 10th place and had a small gap to the driver ahead and concentrated on getting into a rhythm.
By the end of the 7th lap race I had caught on the back of the lead group which was a train of 8 or so karts and I did the 4th fastest lap of the race which was pretty cool.
I'm pretty much sitting around my qualifying position now and hopefully a good heat three tomorrow will bump me up closer to the top ten for the pre-final
