 Marilou and I decided we were not going to tell anyone that she was going out for a test drive in my kart. She put on my driving suit, pulled on the helmet, put on the neck brace, the gloves and the elbow pad. She was ready to go. I pushed the kart up to the starting grid and her father Gerald saw us. Right away he knew what we were up to. Marilou climbed in, and after a few brief instructions, I started the engine and out she went. A few years earlier Marilou had her own 4-cycle kart. One Christmas it was there under the tree on Christmas morning. She tried driving it three or four times at Georgetown in practice but said later she "hated it". It took her a month and a half to get up the courage to tell her dad she did not want to race. After that they got rid of the kart. That appeared to be the end of her racing career. This time it was her decision to try again. Now instead of trying to drive a kart with a 5 horsepower Honda bolted to it she had one with a 25 horsepower Parilla next to her right elbow. Quite a different ride. Most people when they go out on a 2-cycle kart for the first time it is usually a more forgiving Yamaha and they take it slow for the first little while to get used to it. Not Marilou. Even by the second lap she had her foot hard into it. She had not yet mastered the braking points before the corners and spun a number of times. If the engine was still going she would just steer her way back onto the track and be off. If not, I would walk out with the starter and fire up the engine again. On one off track excursion, Marilou knocked off the brake line. She did not know it at the time so she kept going. She just figured the kart did not have very good brakes! When she came in the pits it became evident the brakes were not functioning properly when the only way she could stop was by running the kart into a post. I fixed the brakes and she was ready to go out for more.  Some cynics watching from the pits suggested that she was going to wreck my kart. I was not too worried. I jokingly said it wasn't mine anyway. It was really belonged to my sponsor Roy Brydon. I'm not sure if Roy would find this comment funny or not. He wasn't there to see what was happening anyway. When we were done I took Marilou over to the grid and we took a photo of the newly initiated driver with the kart. She already looked like a serious contender. Maybe next year. |
||