So if you haven’t heard the news already, H-Karts’ A team reigned supreme over 92 other teams in the 2015 British Universities’ Karting Championship (BUKC). In only their fifth year participating in the championship, they were fighting for top place on the standings from the first round to the last, culminating in a nail-biting and controversial final race that will no doubt still be talked about in years to come. Oliver Smith reports on a brilliant season for the club.

Huddersfield’s A (Ollie Greenwood, Patryk Szczerbinski, Josh Butcher, Shaun Arnold) and B team (Olly Smith, Ollie Milner, Joe Jacques, Jake Butcher) took to the track in the qualifiers and both successfully qualified highly into the main class – third and seventh respectively. It was another landmark surpassed as it was the first time H-Karts had two teams in the main championship.

Rounds 1 and 2 - Rye House

Round one of each circuit would be sprint racing and the second endurances. Patryk won the first race of the BUKC season after gaining a ten-second time penalty and pushing to cross the finish line by more than ten seconds over second place to secure it, doing so on the final lap. The rest of the team also scored highly with two sixth places and a ninth.

The B team also performed admirably with a fifth, tenth, fourteenth and twenty-fifth. Round two saw the second win of the day for H-Karts. An A team partnership of Ollie G and Josh capitalising on the problems of rivals to prevail. Following this event, A team were riding high in second in the standings, while B team were loving life up in ninth. The H-Karts C team, who were running in the rookie championship this year, finished their first round of four in seventh, after two race wins courtesy of Jake Hornsby and Dan Jones.

Rounds 3 and 4 – Buckmore Park

Huddersfield A broke the spell of bad luck that seems to haunt them every time they visit Kent’s Buckmore Park circuit. They walked away with two victories in the sprints, courtesy of Ollie G and Patryk, enough to win them the round outright for the first time in the BUKC. Two high scoring endurance races, fifth and sixth, gave them a solid third for round four. B team didn’t manage any wins, but a thirteenth and sixteenth in their two rounds were very respectable. The rookie drivers had a nightmare in monsoon-like conditions the following day and left Kent eleventh.

Rounds 5 and 6 – Llandow

The Llandow track of South Wales typically came with a lot of rain. Josh B didn’t mind it though as he stormed through the field to take his first BUKC sprint win of the year. A team extended their points advantage at the top of the table by finishing second overall in the morning’s sprints. B team had two good top ten results, giving them a well deserved eighth.

It started to dry up by the afternoon and Huddersfield took another endurance victory with the partnership of Patryk and Ollie G, enough to win them the round outright. B team had everything that could have gone wrong go wrong in the afternoon and were left thanking the dropped round system. The rookies took second in Wales thanks to a double podium and fourth place.

Rounds 7 and 8 – Whilton Mill

The last weekend of March played host to three days of solid BUKC action. The rookies ended their season on a high, finishing third in a tightly-fought championship after a third on the first day at Whilton and Tom Sansbury taking a victory. The morning of the final day was damp but with spirits high – Huddersfield, leading the standings but only by a small margin over rivals and past winners, Oxford Brookes. As luck would have it, the two title-challenging teams and their B teams were drawn to race in the same heats and endurances. Unusually, none of the top teams took any of the sprint race wins but Huddersfield finished round seven a small margin clear of Brookes having locked horns with them on track in more than one race.

Huddersfield A led Oxford Brookes A in the first of two endurances, finishing second to their rival’s third place. Unfortunately, in the last of the two, Brookes’ B team got a little too involved and ended up deliberately taking out the innocent Ollie G on track. Things became very heated and despite the race results showing that our title rivals had won on points because of the incident, the issue went to the stewards who eventually resolved it by correctly disqualifying both Oxford Brookes teams from the races. It was not the way anyone would have liked to see the championship decided, but we are confident the best team rightly won. Huddersfield are the British University Karting Champions!

Following the events of Whilton Mill, Huddersfield as a team were praised by many to have handled the unfortunate situation extremely well and deserved to emerge as the rightful title holders and we can certainly say we are proud to do so.

Ten of our drivers head to Teesside this weekend for the second ever BUKC 24 hour race. It will be the last race of the university year for us and the last ever race for a good percentage of our team, who have put in a hell of a lot of work to put H-Karts where it is now and it will be sad to see them go. Congratulations on a stellar final season guys, we’ll make sure we try our best to bring it home again next year!