Loughborough A and B Teams Take the Title at Llandow

The Loughborough A and B teams took 1st and 2nd place in the British Universities Karting Championship 2008 in what turned out to be the closest contested season in the history of the championship.

None of the top 3 championship contenders seemed want to win the championship at Round 9 as Oxford A finished 20th, Loughborough A were 14th and Swansea Metropolitan A were 10th. It was like watching Lewis Hamilton at Brazil in 2007.

This allowed the Kimi Raikkonens of Plymouth A, Loughborough B, and Oxford Brookes A to take the top 3 spots at Llandow and close the gap massively to the top title contenders.

the racing was closer than ever before

So close was final championship result, that only 2 points covered the top 5 teams. No one had any idea where their teams had finished until the final championships results were announced.

Plymouth A who had driven their hearts out to win the final round at Llandow were penalised 3 points for picking up 3 black flags at Round 5 at Rye House earlier in the season. They finsihed 5th overall on 397 points.

Swansea Metropolitan A, finished 4th on 398 points after a disappointing round 9.

Then when it was announced that Oxford Brookes finished 3rd overall tied on 398 points with Swansea Met, an almighty cheer roared from the Loughborough camp as they realised they had taken the top 2 spots in the championship.

But would it be Loughborough A or the Loughborough B team that took the championship title?

Both teams were drawn on 399 points, both teams had won a round and both teams had come 2nd once in a round each as well.

However, Loughborough A had scored two 3rd place results compared to their B team’s one 3rd place so took the championship title in what has gone down in history as the closest ever finish to the BUKC ever.

The top 3 teams: Loughborough B, Loughborough A, and Oxford Brookes A

Ben Dainton, captain of the Loughborough squad says that the team are delighted at the result which had come as quite a surprise:

“Everyone’s well happy. We had lost hope of the B team winning after Clay Pigeon. We were aiming for 4th.”

“The top 3 title contenders, including our A team, did their best to throw it away at the final. Even at the end of Round 9 we still thought that Swansea had won it despite their bad result.”

“We honesly had no idea that our teams had won. Being joint on 1st and 2nd is just unbelievable.”

Oxford’s mascot failed to bring the team the luck they needed

Oxford Brookes karting president, Del Beckley, was delighted with 3rd overall despite some difficulties in round 9:

“If we had one or two better rounds, we could have won it. Dave Evans spun in Race 2 and worked our way back up to 3rd. And Nelson got a black flag too so we finished 3rd in Round 9.”

“To be honest we expected just a top 5 after Clay, so we’re really happy to finish 3rd in the championship.”

“Special thanks to Perdy Morgan, for organising us all without putting her bum in a kart. We couldn’t have done it without her.”

So how may Loughborough fair next year? According to Dainton, the team have got as good a chance as this year:

“We’re losing just 1 driver from our team this year so I think we have a good chance of winning it again. We can’t wait for next season already.”

Results

Pos	Team	Points	Drivers
1st	Loughborough A	399	Dave Robinson, Steve Hicks, Nick Goodfellow, Andy J Wilson
2nd	Loughborough B	399	Ben Dainton, Matt Cornwell, Mike Chaplin, Dave Ap-Thomas
3rd	Oxford Brookes A	398	Ed Lo Bianco, Nelson Mason, David Evans, Ed Philippe
4th	Swansea Metropolitan A	398	Oli Knights, Pete Cole, Peppe Lecchessi, Shaun Dickson
5th	Plymouth A	397	Andy Jenkins, Tristan Gibbs, Sam Haines, Christophe Hssette, Peter Hill

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