The third annual Digital Karting Championship held at TeamSport Brighton brought together some of the finest businesses in Brighton and dealt some stunning race results.
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.
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