The Buckmore Park Kart Club held their final event of the year on an unseasonably mild day, which had started out dry until rain showers arrived for the afternoon’s finals.

Tensions were high in the Honda Clubman final as Alex Moody and Sebastian Bloch tore away from the rest of the field, who had managed to stumble over each other at the slippery turn 2 hairpin.

Moody held the slenderest of leads over his championship rival Bloch for 10 laps, until eventually he had to give way to Sebastian’s pressure down at the bottom end of the wet & greasy circuit.

The race was then on in earnest for the title as whoever finished in front would be crowned 2015 champ, at the line after 15 minutes of tense racing it was the blue Ambition racing kart of young Sebastian who pipped the dejected Alex in his green BKR machine, that was complete with Christmas bow decorations!

Only 4 points separated them after eight championship rounds. Another driver who should have featured was Herne Bay’s Callum Gunning, a poor Pre-final left him way down on the grid for the final, but he clawed his way up to an impressive 3^rd at the finish.

Oliver Greenall was behind in 4^th from a charging pair of Anthony Amato and Matthew Hyde. Sam Shaw took the IAME with Craig Morgan the summer championship.

After the drama of the opening final Patrick Kibble wrapped up the Mini Max title in dominant style. This class shared the track with the throaty sounding 4 stroke Junior Subaru class, which lap slower than their 2 stroke rivals, this caused a few unsettling moments in the awful conditions, as the faster Rotax powered karts came up to lap the slower Subaru versions.

Kibble handled this superbly and won by a stonking 6.4 seconds, Jenson Butterfield fared worse in the traffic but held on to 2^nd place from a fast closing Ronnie Foster, who found a lot of pace as the race wore on, his 3^rd place sealed 2^nd in the championship.

Tom Canning finished 4^th from Oliver Appleby and Kieron Jermey. The Subaru class was won by Nathan Jeffery, who escaped some further hairpin 2 chaos to pull an unassailable gap over his nearest rivals, Owen Hizzy finished 2^nd from new championship winner Max Goodwin, Troy Beswick was 4^th, Zac Spence 5^th and James Black 6^th.

Harry Thompson and Oliver Marsh, were not in the battle for the championship honours, but both wanted to win the final Honda Cadet race of the year. Marsh really gave Thompson a hard race to the flag in the final, finishing less than a second behind the diminutive Harry.

The championship battle raged behind this pair with Sam Heading finishing a mere 0.2 seconds behind Alfie Prince in 3rd place, this was enough to steal the title from Alfie’s Ambition team mate Owen Tolley, who finished in 5^th, by a slender two points.

Tom Lebbon finished in 6^th. The championship could have gone any way over the race duration, this being felt by both the young drivers and their parents, an eight month contest being decided by a combination of weather conditions and the best kart set up on the day. One bitterly disappointed youngster was Alfie Glenie, who had been in the championship hunt all year but just couldn’t find that combination when it mattered.

Junior Max and X30 karts were up next. A wild start by Tooley driver Tyler Sullivan didn’t help his cause at all as he slithered on the soaking wet grass, his championship rival – Bromley’s Charlie Bennett, driving for the Sittingbourne ‘Project One’ team, only had to finish close to Tyler to clinch the title but he had other ideas and tussled with Myles Apps early on before pulling clear to take both the win and title in style.

Luke Ide, Apps’s DHR team mate moved into 2^nd place and looked good as the race wore on, he finished 1.9 seconds behind the #53 kart of Bennett. Apps held onto 3^rd from Michael Smith, Sullivan who finished 2nd in the championship and Bradley Barrett in 6^th.

The final race of the day was for the Senior Rotax/177 and X30 class drivers. The title had already been virtually secured by new Dad Elliot Rice and that was a good thing as he had an event to forget, starting from a lowly grid slot, he noticeably backed off for a safe 6^th place by the end of the race.

At the front Charlie Turner and new Beechdean Aston Martin driver – Jack Bartholomew diced over the top spot. The latter couldn’t hold onto the flying Turner and actually slipped back far enough to have a fired up Kit Brough snapping at his rear bumper. Brough couldn’t quite find a way past though and settled for 3^rd place and 2^nd overall in the championship.

Luke Reade did well to take 4^th after Jonathan Wilkes slipped back to 5^th near the end. Gary Cox took the win in the 177 class from American entrepreneur Zak Brown, who must have found a wet Buckmore Park somewhat different to Daytona Speedway where he competed last month!

The X30 class had four entrants this month; three of those were from the Ambition racing team, Ben Steward defeating the two Bridle twins, Chris & Edward. KPi driver Emily Rogers completed her first Senior X30 race by finishing 2^nd behind Steward, a stella performance and no mean feat considering that she had to overtake the 177 drivers to do so.

Maidstone’s Chris Bridle finished 4^th but took the championship title from his sibling rival Edward, a great reward for his consistent pace in the class this year.

That ended an exciting day and the year at Buckmore Park, the circuit’s season recommences on January 17^th 2016.