Summer is at last in full swing, and were getting into the heat of the 2025 racing season at Norway Motorsports Park. It was the 5th club race of the season, and with some possible weather concerns looming, crowds today were a little smaller. Ignite Senior brought an 8 kart field, including myself, to the grid, and despite the lower numbers, all the regular front-runners were still present and ready to duke it out.
The day started out with some more new rules being set forward in the drivers meeting, in the form of enforcing blocking penalties. Their new precedent was that whatever line you chose coming off a corner, you could not change your line for any reason unless you are passing. If you did change your line, whether it was for defensive reasons or just returning to the racing line, you would get a penalty. The way I have always understood blocking from all forms of racing is making a move in reaction to another driver’s move, as in, if a driver pulls out to pass you and then you move toward them in response, that is blocking. When they said that you would get a blocking penalty for changing your line for any reason–even if nobody was making a move on you–I was a bit confused by the logic behind that. Feel free to leave your thoughts if this new penalty system does or doesn’t make sense to you. I wasn’t able to get a much clearer understanding of the new ruling beyond that, but all I could do was just keep it in the back of my mind and see how things unfolded.
The day started out pretty similar to previous weeks, showing good pace in practice and scoring my fourth pole of the season for the heat race. Starting on pole I maintained the lead out of the first turn and tried my same approach as before to defend like my life depended on it for 8 laps. A few laps in, I looked behind to see what was going on behind me, and I saw not James Recendez, but Jeremy Colley, who seemed to have found a lot of speed that day and got past James. Knowing it wasn’t Recendez who was behind me, I took a gamble that Colley would be a little less aggressive and dialed back my defensiveness in pursuit of faster lap times. Colley didn’t hold back, however, and tried anything he could to get past me and score his first win of the season. At one point, Colley made a move to my outside heading into turn 8, which is a heavy braking zone. He started backing out as if he was going to slot back in line, and I, foolishly, moved back to the outside thinking I was clear, and I wasn’t. I caught my left rear on Colley’s front nose, spun around, and fell back to 7th. Even if I was clear that probably could have been called as a block, so I guess we’ll say the penalty served itself in that respect.
So then we move on to the final starting 7th, at the back of the 8-kart field. Looking at times from the previous race, the top three were the lead back that separated themselves from everyone else, so I needed to get to at least 4th by the end of the first lap to catch them before they run away. Starting the race, I got two karts within the first few turns, and another by the end of lap 1, already putting me right behind the leaders and within striking distance. A couple laps later I managed to get around the third place kart of Mike Stephenson, and not long after I got James Recendez for second. Just like that I had gone from starting at the back to fighting for the race lead, and we weren’t even at the halfway point yet. Now all I had to do was get ahead of Jeremy Colley, who was leading his first laps in Ignite. However, continuing the theme this season, everything I tried to get past the first place kart just didn’t work. And while trying the only move I could make on him, I got hung out to dry in the next corner and got freight trained straight back to 4th. A lap later I got back up to third, and, in only one attempt, Recendez broke Colley’s defense and got the lead back. With time running out and the officials losing count of the laps, the checkered flag flew on lap 11 and Recendez got his third win of the season, continuing his basically undefeated streak.
This one hurt. A lot. Not just because I lost to James again, but also because I made a fool of myself making that mistake and putting myself on the back foot to begin with. I’m trying to prove that I am one of the most skilled and competitive racers in the Ignite Series, and the performance I put on that day was the exact opposite of that. Next up on the menu is the Ignite Challenge double-header weekend, which will turn the stakes up exponentially with all of the best drivers and a Skip Barber scholarship on the line. Wish I could have gone into it on the back of some better results, but thankfully it hasn’t taken my confidence down a bit.