Horsley brothers look smart in karts

Marco, 11, and Louis, eight, from Loxwood, are competing in the Honda Clubman class and the Honda Cadet class respectively.

After a warm-up round in January at Bayford Meadows, they went in February to Buckmore Park in Kent.

It was a steep learning curve for the boys, particularly Louis in the races, with packed grids (often 30-plus karts) and plenty of incidents.

Louis qualified well in eighth and made a good start on the first heat. But he got caught up in several first-lap tangles hat left him at the back of the pack with a bent rear axle. He started the second heat but was shunted into the wall at the second hairpin.

Louis battled back to make up a further six places. Starting the final 17th, more first-lap wrangling dropped him to 22nd, but he fought his way up to 15th.

The March meeting at Buckmore saw more contact leading to a 17th-place finish in the final race, but he finished 14th out of 28 in the final race in the April meeting.

The first three rounds at Bayford Meadows, also in Kent, have been a little more successful – Louis has always managed to finish consistently in the top third of a competitive field of 20-plus karts, the highlight a third-place heat win.

Such consistency enabled Louis to reach sixth place in the Bayford Meadows rankings for 2017.

Louis will keep working on improving qualifying to enable him to battle more at the front of the pack rather than having to work through the mid-pack karts.

The boys have visited Lydd kart circuit near Camber Sands several times, firstly for a club meeting which was a refresher before the second round of the Kent Kart Championship.

Marco was able to race at the Lydd rounds, with Lydd being a non-MSA circuit, and has made progress, beating many of the other bambino drivers that had also moved up to the Honda Cadet Clubman class in 2017.

Louis took a little while to adapt to the harder, less grippy compound of tyres in use this year at Lydd, but managed to take second place in one final round. In the next visit Louis was even more dominant, managing to shave over half a second per lap from the previous visit from a combination of better set-up and an adaptation of his driving style.

This saw him lead three races for the majority of laps, just missing out taking the win in the final by half a kart length.

It was back to Buckmore Park in May as both Louis and Marco sought to show improvements.

Saturday’s qualifying went well, with both boys improving their times throughout the day.

Sunday was race day for Louis and he got out in the middle of the pack and was making good progress when a clip holding the front bumper snapped. He managed to qualify 11th out of 16 starters putting him 11th on the grid for the first heat.

He moved up to sixth by the end of the heat.

In the second heat Louis was pushing for fourth place but the kart alongside him turned into him and forced him off the track. He was unhurt but upset at the forced retirement.

After some swift repairs to his kart, Louis had to start the final race at the back of the grid. He battled to finish tenth.

Louis showed increased pace and race craft over the weekend and will take this forward to next month’s meeting.

Dad Ken thanked the Ambition Motorsport team, Extech, Exponential-E & Dunsfold Park for their continued support.

Both boys will continue to push on as the season continues.

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