post from June 02, 2024

Yesterday I was racing with Alonso! Of course not that Alonso, who is well known as the most experienced Formula One racer in the paddock. I have a friend and colleague with the same surname. He visited Finland and invited me to join him for a casual karting race in Vantaa. 

I was quite surprised by the circuit - it is well designed, very long, outside track with interesting corners. Lots of long high-speed corners and a couple of slow-speed tricky corners. 

Usually, people don’t treat karting as something big and important. But the truth is every real racer has started from karting championships. As in matrix, the same physics applies for both small kart and big formula one. 

I’ll give you a sample. In Formula One it’s very important to have proper tires of proper temperature. If the racer just changed the tires, he cannot go full speed and brake for 100%, the tires are not in a working temperature yet. Same with karts - even in the second lap I easily got my wheels blocked on braking because they were not warm enough. They got needed temperature only one lap after that.

There is some kind of meditative mood you are in when driving a racing kart on a track. For me, it was a mix of fear and excitement in the beginning, which changed with concentration and trying to get things right. Little better on every lap. Didn’t make this corner good enough, next lap I fixed the trajectory and made it a little better. Repeat. Again and again. 

Finally, a checkered flag was waved and we drove back to the pit lane. My time was the third out of 3 racers :) but my opponents were quite strong. 

We sat together and chatted a bit about track, races, and life. I was told, this track is usually rented by famous Kimi Raikkonen when he’s visiting Finland. During one of such visits, Kimi heard talk of his friends that one of this track corners could not be passed at a full speed when the gas pedal was flat out. He said in his manner - of course, you can do it. In order to prove it, Kimi sat in a kart and got to the track. A couple of warming laps later he drove full speed in the corner and crashed into the barrier. Old tires 🛞 were flying around the track. Unperturbed Kimi walked back to the pit lane and said - yes, you cannot do it.

But what a desire to prove them wrong! That’s why he is the latest Ferrari champion!