The Texas Pro Kart Challenge rounds 3 and 4 at Grandsport Speedway took place over the June 1st weekend. On Thursday Andre and I did some initial setup on our karts and loaded up Chris’s trailer for the long drive to Houston. We ended up leaving Plano around 5:30 pm and slowly made our way down. Just south of Ennis we met up with Mathew Souza and carpooled the rest of the trip to Houston. Mat is a veteran racer who is our competition in the Local Option Yamaha KT100 class for this weekends activities and who would prove to a valued friend and competitor!

After spending a night at a friend of Andre’s place, we completed our journey to Grandsport Speedway and setup our pit spot. Everything got underway pretty fast with us finishing up our registration, unloading and getting ready for our practice sessions. The TPKC organizers had setup multiple sessions so everyone was getting lots of track time! Friday practice was going well with my kart setup seemingly perfect and getting use to the track layout.

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There was quite a bit of action the whole weekend and I plan to upload a video at some point, but for now I leave you with a few pictures and a quick synopsis:

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Due to a problem with my starter nut, I destroyed my crank and that would have been the end to the weekend for me except Mat graciously allowed me to use his spare engine. With that ordeal sorted out, the rest of the heats were basically Mat and I battling for position. We would pass each other in the draft (which was very fun by the way!) and dive up the inside on certain turns. At one point in lapped traffic (the Chondas were on the track with us) I didn’t expect Mat to break as early as he did and I ran up the back of his kart! Luckily nothing broke and we continued on. For the final race of the weekend we got caught out in lapped traffic again and I unfortunately was forced off the track with 1 lap to go which meant Mat would get the win and I finished second place.