Friday night saw 11 of us heading over to Newport for a fantastic evening's entertainment, the Grand Prix challenge. Despite some nutter on M4 turnoff roundabout trying to take out Pam's car, we made it in one piece. Ramzi and Harry had brought along girlfriends Claire and Celia, with Pam, Kate, Aidan, Dave, Rob, Matt and Ian rounding out the list of entrants.

First up, general carnage as the practice session gradually got tastier and tastier - with 11 karts on track it wasn't hard to find someone to run into, but after a relatively benign first lap we began to realise just how fast the karts could go and suddenly it was race on. Various sections of track became more like a dodg'em rink as we swerved our machines around, and marshalls sprinted back and forth digging people out of the barriers.

We then went out in groups of 5 to take part in 11 heats of 6 laps each. With only 5 karts on the circuit these proved a little less chaotic, but with no warm up lap with which to work out the kart's abilities, there were some pretty hairy moments around the first couple of laps. The hairpin at the end of the second straight is not the place to find out you've got no brakes! Aidan led the way early on with a lap of 33 seconds, but towards the end of the heats Rob broke the 33 second barrier. Ramzi is clearly a fast driver but too many trips to the wall knocked him back in the overall standings.

The final was a 15 lap affair for the 6 fastest drivers over the heats, and after checking that none of the karts were of the no brakes/steering variety we were off. Aidan and Harry disappeared into the distance leaving Taff to road block Ramzi and Rob. In the end Ramzi managed to squeeze through and despite crashing twice, came in third. Taff chased Rob home for 4th and 5th, with Ian finishing 6th. A ding-dong battle up front with plenty of overtaking and warnings for bumping took shape, but as they crossed the line the winner was Aidan!

Ramzi got the fastest lap of the day, and a showering of champagne from Aidan on the winners' podium and then we all buggered off to the pub smelling of petrol.

I'll be bringing my proper camera next time - it's just too dark to get a sense of the speed and atmos!

The only decent shot I could get of the track

Kate comes roaring round the bottom corner

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