For the second year running, our good friends at Porsche Singapore have organised a media endurance karting challenge to get us all in the endurance racing spirit.

If you break it all down, the idea is very simple. The team that does the most amount of laps at the end of the 2.4 hours wins. 36 drivers, split up into 12 teams, would take to the track, separated into two different classes.

You had the ‘Pro’ class, which consisted of Porsche Pros and the bulk of the local automotive media, and the ‘Pro-Am’ class, which featured mostly lifestyle influencers. We’d all get an initial 45 minute Practice-cum-Qualifying session, which will then set the grid for the actual race.

Each team formation was random – we had to draw lots which would then determine who’d be driving alongside us. I ended up with Kai Yi (from Torque) and Anton (from Horizon Driver’s Club).

We decided to split up the practice time equally amongst ourselves. This left each of us with about 12 minutes of effective run time, excluding our in and out laps. At the end of the session, our best lap time was good enough for fifth on the grid.

Then came the race start. The starting drivers had to run to the karts from the opposite end of the start-finish straight. There was an utter frenzy at the very beginning of the race, with us falling a few places down as the faster and more experienced karters fought for position.

We recovered to sixth, and performed our first driver swap 15 minutes into the race. This was to ensure we did not get held up unnecessarily in the pits, and there was also a nice gap brewing where we wanted to filter out into. The offset strategy meant that Anton could comfortably close up on the battling pack, passing them for position as they made their first stops.

For most of the race, this decision paid off, as we spent most of it in clean air whilst the others were battling. We got up to as high as fourth in the closing stages of the race, with some actual pace that’d see us scrap for the final podium step towards the end. Provided we could maintain the pace we were on.

A pit-stop mishap meant we lost a significant chunk of time, and we eventually ended up finishing the race last of the “Pro” class on the road. But post-race penalties promoted us to seventh overall!

We’d like to thank Porsche for the hospitality, and for inviting us to compete in the race!

You May Be Interested In: We Attended SRA’s Sim Racing Open House!