Go! INJEY! Go!

Okay, here we go.
Focus.
Speed. I am speed.
One winner.
Fourty-two losers.
I eat losers for breakfast.
No, no. Stay focused.
Speed.
I'm faster than fast,
Quicker than quick.
I am Lightning!
-- Lightning McQueen from the movie "Cars"

You think that I am flaunting about myself. Don’t you? But I don’t care. I won the race! Didn’t I?
It’s been just 2 months and I already won not just one race but two. What’s more? I beat my own personal best on the track and got into the Top 10 of that day. When I play Need for Speed, people always ask the same question, "What good do you get by racing in the computer?” And my answer would be "It lets me do what I could not do in the real world". But now, I got my chance in the form of Go-karting on the Victory Lane Indoor center just 10 miles from my home to put all the efforts and tricks into reality. Now don’t judge that this is some 5 mph kids track in theme parks like MGM and Kishkintha in India that even a child in his/her stroller can overtake. We are talking about professionally maintained track with fully geared 40 mph karts driven by experienced racers.

When Sachin (not the cricketer) introduced me to the world of karting, it was like entering a new world. But the only difference was that I sometimes get the feeling that I know the world very well. When I first started learning to drive the car, I understood one important lesson. You have to feel the car's movements within you. Your mind has to get together with the car's. Once that is done, you can control and drive the car in anyway you want. And this is what I did in the karting race as it is more important to know how to control the kart here. Too many sharp turns; you need to understand when to brake, slow down, overtake and zap. Believe me when I say, it is not easy as it seems while watching from the sides. With the small and flat body of the kart, you always tend to skid when you turn while speeding fast. And it is built as a safety measure inside the kart to slow down when you skid or turn rough. Add to this that picking up the speed again is not fast enough. So you have to very careful on what you do in turns. A lot of patience and experiments can tell you how to get around. Though few tips from the pros might help you, but it is always your experience that will count inside the track.

When I started my first race on 28th March 2008, I recorded my best time with 38.831 seconds which was 6.832 seconds behind the first place. I also realized that things so different when you compete with real people instead of AI in the computer game. 1. People don’t slow down for you to keep the race interesting. 2. They don’t try to hit you to get you off the track and so you can’t hit them too. 3. To make it worse, if you are shown a blue flag, you have to MOVE OVER for the guy who is coming faster behind you and that for a beginner like me is MOVING OVER for everyone else in the race. So I started counting on how many times I MOVED OVER instead of how many cars I over took and that had been the winning factor for most of the races. I always wanted to finish at least one lap with no one overtaking me. And I think I have achieved it once or twice in the 6 races in the last month. But June was different. I have started to count the number of times I overtake and it has reached 20 or more. And here I am winning my first race and entered the Daily hall of fame.

Does this mean there is something more ahead? It sure is. Watch over racers. A new rookie on the rise!

PS: I am compelled by the pure heart to mention that the races in June were mostly against new players that include Satman who appears to be a promising driver to challenge me soon, his roommate Seetharam, Vinayak who forgot that he is in a racing track and was searching for turn indicators in the kart, Nimesh who I crashed hard on the track for not MOVING OVER and his wife Bhakti who did not kill me for crashing her husband. More drivers welcome as long as they have zero experience in races (betting on horse races excluded). Go karting Go.