From the ages of 8 through to 14, I competed in go karting, or karting for short. It's an expensive sport, where you have to buy your own kart and engine(s), attain your own racing licence, and then travel around the country competing at the various tracks.

We had a significantly smaller budget than most of the folks competing there; as such we had to prepare everything ourselves, where most people pay a professional. Maintaining the kart, rebuilding (and later on, developing) the engines and so forth.

The first two years were spent learning, finishing well within the bottom half of the field ( of generally 25 to 30). This was spent:

Learning how to setup the kart: tire pressures/torsion bars/front track/rear track/gearing/high jet-low jet carb settings/etc etc

Learning how to rebuild engines: re-boring barrels for next piston size/re-aligning cranks/re-kitting carburretors with needle-seat-lever-teflon pump/clutch re-assembly etc

Learning how to drive well: Driving consistently quick laps/how to heat up the tires quickly/how to drive quickly and smoothly at the end to stop the tyres from overheating/going off/making judgement calls on what setup changes were needed on the kart.

Learning how to race: General race-craft/how to overtake cleanly/how to attack carefully during the first vital few laps/how to defend against one/how to defend against a pack/Slipstreaming etc

So, my driving got better alongside our understanding of the kart setup; our engines were consistent now, but still not as good as the front runners, and I was beginning to place closer and closer toward the midfield and then inside the top 10.

THEN:

At the first race of my third year, I placed second at a monsoon Larkhall track in a close race with Lewis Williamson and Zack Daines. After a year of finishing nowhere, and a year of gradually placing higher up, I'd finally made it into the trophies. Just the thrill of having your name shout out at the end of the day at the clubhouse where they handed out the prizes, hearing everyone cheering and clapping for you was great.

I took it home and showed all my family and friends, it was real, genuine proof of my success rather than myself or my Dad explaining to everyone that; even though we didn't finish in the top placings, we were making it into the high 46 second lap times (front runners doing mid 46s), I won my first heat, and our new engine dyno was almost nearing completion (more on that later).

This trophy and result was proof that all our efforts were working, all the thought, time and hard graft was really making us into a competitive package. It gave both of us huge motivation to continue.

Our inertial engine dyno was up and running through the spring of that year. We could do a power run, log several variables (rev's, engine head temperature, crankcase temperature, exhaust temperature, dyno flywheel speed), and have the run graphed onto the computer (which btw, was an ancient 486 running 3.1 which we got for free! And we had the 'turbo' button on to make sure we got the full 66 Mhz ;) where we could compare it with other power runs. This way, we could objectively try new settings and parts and develop our engines.

All of these steps forward led to my first win in the summer of that year, beating Lewis at Banff (that years Scottish Champion).

This progress continued when I moved up a class to compete in Junior TKM; which was like re-inventing the wheel. The larger kart operated differently in terms of how it should be setup, we had to learn how to tune these engines from scratch (the BT82 has a megaphone, and that changes quite a few things engine setup wise). So, the 'back of the field phase' went from a year and a half to six months this time round.

The peak of my career was in 2003 when I won both the Scottish Open and the NKRA national championship, and was 'the guy to beat' that year, winning seven races in a row, and beating national front runners of the time such as Tom Davis, Lee Bell, James Calado, David Brown and so on.