We took part in the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power over the weekend with our modified karts. It was a brilliant meeting! They had allsorts tackling the hill from a monster 150+ mph  JCB digger (honest!!),  Formula 1's from the 40's to the '70's and huge Bentley's from the '30's that would not have looked out of place in a cartoon.

We took 6 modified karts (hand controls)  to the show and they took part in a demonstration run each day. The karts were prepared by Gary Walker and Rob Haynes. The karts were kindly lent by Maranello UK and John Hoyle. All six engines were supplied by George Robinson and JAG.

On Sunday we had two spare karts so Barrie "Whizzo" Williams and James Martin (TV chef) kindly offered to drive the hand controlled karts. Well, the commentator (Neville Hay) thought this was fantastic and kept talking about it for a couple of hours beforehand, so by the time the karts lined up for the start a huge audience had gathered and Whizzo was playing to the crowd. We fitted a camera on the front of his kart and lined James up in front.

The two of them lived up to expectations! On a circuit barely wide enough to park two karts alongside each other, Whizzo passed James and promptly spun sending James into a spin in sympathy. All of this was of course recorded on the big screen to the great pleasure of the crowd and when the two returned to the paddock there was much fun to be had when they castigated each other!

The disabled drivers enjoyed themselves immensely and a huge amount of support was gained from the outing.

Notes:

This project has 8 karts fitted with hand controls that allows drivers with lower body disability to race competitively against able bodied drivers.

The steering wheel used is similar to a design by Alex Zanardi, an ex Formula 1 driver who had both lower legs amputated. Using this design Alex began racing initially in karts and then returning to the highly competitive world of World Touring Cars.

The project is managed by Gary Walker, based at PF International, near Grantham.

However, these karts are  primarily for indoor circuits and at Cholmondeley  the karts would be driving on a hill climb designed for cars. With help from JAG, John Hoyle and Maranello UK, for this outing the steering wheels were fitted onto race karts with Rotax engines.

We would like to thank:

JAG and George Robinson for supplying the engines

John Hoyle for supplying three intrepid chassis

Maranello UK for supply three chassis

One-Fuel for the race fuel

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