Andy Parker
22nd September 2015

2015 is the third consecutive year that Clearleft has held the Digital Karting Championship as part of the Brighton Digital Festival, a month long extravaganza throughout the city focussed on everything digital. In an almost anti-festival spirit we created an event that takes people away from the screens and puts them into a 90 minute team-based endurance race at the Teamsport Brighton track.

This year, track owners TeamSport, helped us out with getting the costs down, something that people fed back to me as being a barrier to entry. I hope to keep this as standard for future events, and if you're interested in taking part next time contact me (andy.parker@clearleft.com).

Project Clearleft (Chloe Finlayson, Chris Green, Jon Aizlewood, Monika Bansal) joined Brighton new-comers Bison Beer & Loco Social with a returning field consisting of two teams from Built By Buffalo, along with Amido, Tilt and Make Media.

Perhaps it is knowing that a lot of teams had been practicing in the ‘off-season’ but everything looked a lot more equal on-track this time around. Reigning champions Make Media (3 consecutive titles) looked strong throughout until getting a black flag within the last 10 minutes - as did team Clearleft (James Bates, Ben Sauer, Mat Walker & Paul Robert Lloyd) shortly after throwing both teams down leaderboard when a collision caused @jvbates to spin facing the wrong direction. Taking his skills from track time in his Lotus, he righted the Kart. Although it seemed like a safe manoeuvre to remove himself from being an obstruction on track it required the use of both peddles excessively and as we all discovered - that’s a penalty.

Both teams had seemed destined to hit the podium, but this over-exerted effort in the final minutes came at a heavy cost allowing Bison Beer & Loco Social to gain additional laps which would see them landing the first step at the top with a stellar 3rd place opener.

We win! @WeAreAmido wins the #bdf15 Brighton digital festival go cart championship. Awesome driving guys pic.twitter.com/TlEvUP2IrX
— Rob Pearson (@robotperson) September 8, 2015

This dual flagging meant that the cool and calm team at Amido were able to maintain a strong pace and take 1st place, with Make Media still able to clamber back enough time after their penalty to see them return a good 2nd place.

Top Results:

  1. Amido
  2. Make Media
  3. Bison Beer & Loco Social