CKN Driver Blog: Alex Da Silva Travels to Quebec for the First Time

What’s up everyone! Since I’ve taken my sweet time, and about 8.5 years have passed since the Icar ECKC event have, I’m here again here to let you know about my first racing specific journey to Quebec!

I can probably go off for a while on the journey to the track alone, which included tiny, France-esque back roads, passing the Oka cheese factory, the scenery, the traffic, my gps telling me that it found a quicker route to the house I was staying at, which apparently didn’t want to tell me included a ferry trip, which is NOT free, had no cash on me and they obviously didn’t take credit or debit, which led me to going to the nearest convenience store while the ferry was docked, with one of the crew members holding on to my license so that I wouldn’t get the trip for free. Of course there was no ATM there, so I had to buy a bottle of water to get cash back, only to have the minimum fee of $5 waste even MORE precious time while the ferry was waiting on me. Then, being in the loosest fitting sandals, and carrying the flimsiest plastic bag I have ever seen with the water inside, I ran over to the ferry only to see it pulling away from the dock.. luckily I flagged it down in time for them to turn back, after my semi-heart attack, for me to get back on my way. Jeeez!

Photo by: Cody Schindel / CKN

On to the racing – With this being my first time on the Icar circuit, it took a little longer for me to adjust to the track than I had wanted. With Thursday being wet the entire day, it hindered my learning of the “dry” track, and it showed on Saturday for the heat races. Essentially, what had happened was, Thursday was wet, Friday was like my Thursday, Saturday was like my Friday, and the dry morning Warm-up on Sunday is where I should’ve been Saturday. I finally had a good feeling in the kart, with a better setup, and was definitely feeling like I was more on pace.

The Saturday heat races were nothing really to write home about. I came out with a 13th, 9th, and 15th. I was very unlucky getting a shunt in to corner 3 for my last heat race, because up until that point, I had a mega start, getting well up in to the top 10 from my starting position of 14th, but the shunt came, and I went well down the order. I made some decent passes over the weekend, and feel like I raced well, but I was extremely frustrated with my pace.

Sunday came around, and aside from the morning warm-up, it was a wet race! I like driving in the wet, so I didn’t mind the weather. Due to my results in the heat races, I was starting 12th for the final, and boy has it been a while since I’ve started that far back in the wet! Man, the spray was intense, and through the first two corners off the start, literally could not see a thing…was on the bumper ahead of me, and was kind of feeling my way through there lol. I actually dropped a few spots in to corner three, again because of some contact, and I think I was somewhere around 14th-16th. I was determined NOT to be that far back in the pack again, and decided to out brake a few people going in to corner 4…plus, it’s better when the whole train is braking on the rubbered line, and I’m braking underneath the rubber! After some dude came in HOT on the inside in corner 4, he cleared out some space for me on the apex, and I was able to slide on through.

After all that on lap 1, I crossed the line 1 position up from my starting spot, but definitely knew I had the pace to make up more spots. I kept up a good pace for the rest of the race, passed people without losing too much time, made no mistakes, and was able to take advantage of the situation! I came home in 4th, exactly on pace with the 3 ahead of me.

I was definitely happy with the way the weekend ended. I was a little disappointed we didn’t get out for the 2nd final, cause I feel like I could’ve had another good race, but I can’t complain with 4th from 12th! Let’s do it again in Mont-Tremblant!

Quick shout-outs since I’m running out of allotted word space: Thanks to Darren, Marco, and the whole team and group of people under the Energy Corse tent!