TeamSport Go Karting Brighton — Attraction in Adur

22/35. Following my revisit of Crawley on my way to Goodwood 79th Members Meeting I made it down to TeamSport Brighton. Now you may notice this was quite a while back already and I'm not going to lie, this particular experience karting wasn't that great and it had an impact on me feeling like editing the video and also writing about it. The track was great, the staff were great, the karts were great but unfortunately another driver decided to behave very oddly on the last session.

The Brighton track initially looks like it's going to be the same as every other polished concrete track, no grip and a very careful style of driving required, much like driving in the wet. This was not the case though as the track has been in use for so many years now that the whole circuit is deceptively grippy. This made for a lot of fun personally as grip is very much my friend. The track also has a unique bridge that banks from side to side as you'll see in the video and you can even see from the pit lane.

I won both the first sessions with a best time of 32.676s and 32.504s respectively but then on the third session I got the "slow" kart and couldn't improve on my best time so I finished 2nd with a 32.558s while a regular at the track took his rightful place at the top. Whether being quick at this track and on my own played a part in upsetting (one or very few) others on the track I do not know but I have experienced this in the past where people that usually ride dirt bikes or do other sport get rather upset when you pass them very easily at karting. Either way the behaviour of an individual on track got very weird in the last session, they were ramming karts and aggressively blocking myself as you'll see in the video. The individual was black flagged but allowed back on track where they immediately carried on with the strange behaviour but the session ended not long after.

The track is or may have already undergone some major changes. At the time I visited they had just made the pit lane bigger as they're going fully electric which may have happened by now as it was scheduled for May. Therefore I may have been one of the last to drive a petrol kart at TeamSport Brighton. I'll try to revisit in the future as electric karts have so much torque they only suit a grippy track, Brighton may be one of the few tracks they very much suit and I'd very much like to find out.

To summarise another great location, well run as you'd expect from TeamSport, bags of grip which is my personal preference so if you visit have plenty of confidence in the track and you'll do great.

If anyone at TeamSport is reading and sees how bad the behaviour of kart 13 is in the video then please feel free to ban them. The session was 8th April 21:41.

I'm touring all the TeamSport locations, please check out my Karting...

The Brighton 12 hour team endurance was astonishing. One of the most intense team endurance, that we have been a part off and wouldn't believe that, 1st, 2nd and 3th were only seconds apart at end of the 12 hours race!

Anyway jumping the gun a little bit the start from beginning, Matt booked us in. Me, Ami and Mike, couldn't wait for this to start, only been talking about it for month's!

Charlie was our race director for the whole event. We never done a 12 hours endurance race before and didn't know how it actually ran and if there was any special rules. The briefing was very clear on all rules and any questions were answered. Normal TeamSport rules were applied. Every kart to had come in every 3 hours or before. That was up to us keep eye on when refuelling. If the karts ran out of fuel your team was given big penalties.

The refuelling system was that you brought your kart in and told the stuff you want to refuel. Then got into another kart that was fuelled and then you would have to wait five minutes before you could go back out on track. This gave enough time for the staff to refuel the Kart properly and safely. Ready for another team to come in and do the same.

We started the 12hour race with normal grid start at 10.00pm on 21/10/2017, we started second on the grid, with all the different pit stop was jumping from second to last place went then back third place and so on. All the teams were pretty even, we were getting the same time lap times and all come down to when people did swapping drivers and refuelling. The last three hours everyone done their last refuel and it all comes down to the last drivers swap and when to do it. As I said before it was intense throughout the whole night because 1st, 2nd and 3th were seconds from each other. We secured second place! We were 20 seconds behind first place and third place was only a 25sec behind! Can't believe how close it was to the end! We finished at 10.30am on 22/10/2017, what a night!

A big thank you to all marshalls and pit staff, Stu, Jason, Alex and Ben. Thank you very much for making this endurance very enjoyable. Very quick with the lights and on top form for the whole race. After 12hours of racing Elli cooked everyone bacon rolls, thank very much.

Our race director Charlie, did an amazing job! He had one hiccup with the computers in the middle of the race but sorted out very quickly. Charlie ensure every team was happy and enjoying themselves. Anyone who got any penalties or had any problems he would come and talk to you straight away. We know this event wouldn't of happened without him and his passion for karting! Thank you very much, looking forward to doing this again...

Visited many times but never again. Way too much health and safety and flag waving to the point where racing is virtually impossible. Last two sessions we had 5 race-able laps out of a possible 40-45 laps. The rest were on amber or red lights. Staff have completely lost sight of what brings people to a racing circuit. I had even joined as a member to bring my son and his friends more, but we will never come again. I voiced my concerns at the break and the manageress was unbelievably robotic and condescending. She obviously didn’t like me calling them out on their overzealousness of flagging everyone and everything (eg: stopping the whole race because someone in another party had their long hair sticking slightly out of the jumpsuit - why not just bring that one person into the pit lane? Why ruin everyone elses racing?). We ended up in a verbal slanging match, and they threw myself and my party out. Thankfully got a full refund (and asked never to come again), which we wouldn’t have done anyway. They made me walk back to the start of the track for the crime of “not putting my visor down”. And when i pointed out that the person who came to collect the kart also drove it with his visor fully up (it was 30 degrees in the warehouse) they gave some health and safety excuse of “its for your ocular safety”. People who are jobsworths to this degree should not be in motorsports. The outdoor track at Brighton Karting is better anyway. It’s a shame though as the electric karts are great. The track is too small though and the tight corners with no runoff (and bizarrely, not letting anyone use the reverse button on the karts to get themselves out of a barrier crash) means virtually every lap has some sort of incident. Avoid...