On Thursday I went karting at the Kurburgring again, this time with a carrier bag holding my shoes, earplugs and a spare pair of gloves. My brother didn't kart this time but he and Dad spectated. The staff on reception remembered us well from last time. It turned out they'd even read my blog and liked it, which was nice. 

The briefing this time focused more on the correct lines to take around the circuit because the marshal leading it reckoned I could improve if I could get my lines right more consistently. Given that my times on my previous visit had ping-ponged to some extent, I could understand that line of thinking. To this end, one of the other marshals offered to show me the correct lines.

For the first 20 minutes of my allotted half-hour, I had company on the track. Two other people were already there when I headed out. The marshal was not among them. I got going and tried to get into a rhythm. This happened surprisingly quickly. The first lap was not a complete embarassment and the second one a 34.518 - faster than all but 6 of the laps I'd done on my previous visit.

The next seven laps showed slow but steady improvement, apart from one where I lost the rhythm of the lap entirely. I was faster than the other two karters on circuit and was gradually catching them.

Lap 9 of my run involved a big jump in performance. Having previously done 34.4s, I went down to 33.424, which was 0.4 seconds faster than my previous lap record. I was getting close to one of the other karters and starting to plan how to do the overtake...

The next lap was even faster (33.301) and I was nearly on the guy's rear bumper as I noticed another karter join the track a short way behind me. Knowing that overtaking was forbidden into the banked Karusell, I tried to take a cautious approach into the hairpin. Unfortunately I forgot to take into account that karts don't steer so well when driven slowly. The driver in front of me had a poor line into the turn and was slow coming back onto the power. We both crashed, leaving the somewhat bemused marshal looking back at us with "What did the pair of you think you were doing?" body language.

It took a while for us to get going again. So what do I do next? Crash at the same corner next lap, all by my little lonesome! After that, the marshal caught up with me and I was able to follow him for a few laps. My times went all over the place - as I tried to learn the improved lines for different parts of the circuit, I would lose track of what I was supposed to be doing for others. It's difficult to track another kart closely and maintain quality of driving in your own kart simultaneously. Eventually, I turned in a lap that was considered acceptable and the marshal motioned for me to go past.

A few minutes later, everyone left the track except me because I had 10 minutes more to go. This was going to be a great opportunity to put what I had learned into practise. Except that my fingers were getting tired. I was struggling to turn the kart. I responded to it by slowing down, which of course made the kart gradually less responsive to the turning I was managing to do. I ended up stopping for nearly 4 minutes to let my fingers recover.

After I got going again, I nearly matched my previous fastest time and managed to consistently be within 0.4 seconds of that time on the other laps. I could feel things were much better after my break. On the penultimate lap, I thought something in the glove had worked loose, but carried on regardless - no sense stopping again...

After the chequered flag, I had a "debrief" with Dad and my brother.  They reckoned I hadn't managed to get everything right on a single lap; every time there was at least one corner where I'd made an error. If I'd managed to string my best corners together, they reckoned I could have been over a second faster. Still, the "acceptable" lap turned out to be 33.104 seconds. An improvement of 0.6 seconds on my fastest lap and 1.88 seconds on my average (non-crash/break) lap was good work.

The "debrief" got interrupted when I got round to removing my gloves. Nothing in the glove had got loose. I had simply got a thumbnail-sized blister on the base of my right hand, which had popped. I heard motorsport was dangerous but that wasn't quite what I had in mind... Just to make it worse, I'd left my first-aid kit in my karting bag at home. Good thing the reception staff had plasters.

I am now the 7th-fastest woman to have driven at the Kurburgring, just 0.6 seconds slower than one of the members of staff. Just in case anyone thinks I should replace Felipe Massa, I should point out that there is a junior who, despite using a kart with less than half the engine displacement of the kart I used, has a fastest lap 0.195 seconds faster than me. Clearly I have targets at which to aim...

Just after lunch today, Dad, my brother and I went to the Kurburgring in Sutton-in-Ashfield. Never mind the punny title - it was the first time I'd karted in a while and as a bonus I would get to compete against my brother! He has had some road car driving experience but between the sessions I've done at Elk Karting and the one at Amen Corner, I've got slightly more experience of karts.

The reception was nice, with race-themed chairs and friendly staff. Our luck was in because it turned out that Thursday afternoon is "happy hour", so there was a discount on the karting. One downside became apparent immediately; it was noisy, largely because there were petrol karts on an indoor track. This was an issue for me as I have sensitive hearing. I'd brought earplugs but the staff provided some as well.  The other issue with using petrol karts indoors is ventilation, though the place didn't have much in the way of fumes in the air.

The briefing was not the usual set-up of someone standing at the front of the classroom going through the rules. It started that way, with a staff member pointing out the basics as well as briefly explaining circuit-specific things like where different rooms were and the evacuation procedure, but then we were left watching a video with the rules on there. If I'd been a first-timer, I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn't understood the video properly, but fortunately I've karted before and the rules were only slightly different for the Kurburgring. The big circuit-specific rule was that the banked Karusell Corner/Turn 2 was a half-speed corner with no overtaking permitted.

This banked corner was the big "selling point" of the Kurburgring; a square hairpin with a very uneven surface unlike the rest of the track surface. The bank was steep enough that it was impossible to see what was on it from the spectator area, but there was a marshal position inside the corner in the (likely) case of someone getting it wrong.

The corner was important but it wasn't the most important one on the circuit. That was the double-apex Turn 6, which had a deceptive amount of run-off and invites two major faults - excessively early turn-in and excessive entry speed. I found the early turn-in issue to be quite a fault in my driving during the early stages, resulting in two small crashes. Once I got myself out but the other time I had to wave a marshall over to help me.

The excessive entry speed problem was more noticeable in the group that raced before my family descended upon the track. Two karters in particular had a tendency to try going full-pelt through the first apex, slam on the brakes, skid, barely make it through the second apex... ...and get passed by the karter who'd gone wide and let them make their mistake. Apart from the times the karter who'd gone in too fast simply found the barriers and had to get help.

The karts in question have 270 cc, which is as much as a single-engine arrive-and-drive kart can be expected to do. The circuit is also fairly new, so we're talking about karts in a reasonable state. For the first five laps, I also missed the barriers. With that in mind, note this:

• The Kurburgring is 450 metres.
• My first lap was 62.343 seconds.  
• This is a rather stately 16.147 mph. 

  My first lap round the track may be the slowest one of the day (and certainly was as of the time I left the track).  My next three laps were nothing special either because I was still learning the track. This involved nearly stopping the kart at each corner because I was figuring out apexes and braking points. I even had to apply the brakes a little on the flat-out Devil's Elbow/Turn 1. My brother was long gone, having passed me halfway round the first lap.

Apparently Dad, on the sidelines, was getting worried that I might not be enjoying myself. Admittedly, the point in the opening lap where I got cramp in my right foot was no fun at all, but it wore off (the cramp not the foot) and fun started to creep in. Then I suddenly went 4 seconds faster than my previous lap - and 27 seconds faster than my first one - to put in a respectable 35.932 second lap. That was more like it :) This gave me more confidence - perhaps more than was warranted. Next lap, I spun at the second of three hairpin corners called "Mirabeau" (or Turn 8). There was no Monaco-esque crane, only the need to wave over an ever-willing marshal. My brother crashed at the same corner later in the lap, which made me feel better and got me within half a lap of him.

I'd almost caught my brother again when I had the first of my crashes at Turn 6, followed by another crash in the second Mirabeau hairpin two laps later. So much for getting a rhythm and now my brother was threatening to pass me again.

Fortunately, something had clicked in my head. I pulled out a string of laps in the high-35 to low-37 second range, gradually getting better until lap 23. Then I had another breakthrough and did 7 of the next 8 laps within a second of one another, the fastest at 34.008. The one lap that wasn't was the lap I caught my brother. He was beginning to get tired and make mistakes. I spent much of one lap following him (his basic technique was good) but when he made an error of concentration at Turn 3 of the following lap, I cut to the inside and overtook him. He retired 3 laps later due to tiredness and spent the rest of the session with Dad, watching me.

I was worried for a time that I'd missed the chequered flag signal because I didn't see any indicator that proved I should be the only kart on track. It was only when I saw Dad and my brother not waving their arms round trying to get me to notice them that I worked out everything was OK. Whereupon I crashed at the double-apexed Turn 6. Oops.

That was my last major error of the session. I turned in a series of reasonably consistent laps. There was a lap in the high-35 seconds, two in the low-36 seconds and then 8 of the last 9 laps were within half-a-second of one another, in the high-34 seconds and very-low-35 seconds. 

There was something a little bit different about the other lap, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I was still very happy as the chequered flag was waved, though - I can't see times from the kart but I could feel a pattern beginning to settle into my muscles. I cruised round one last time, parked the kart and scrambled over the barrier separating kart from staff. The staff member who met me (who'd also initiated my safety briefing) told me I'd done very well. I assumed she meant I'd behaved well and not been a complete embarrassment to anyone, so I said "thank you" and went to Dad and my brother.

Who then pointed me to the timing screen. It's a good system that clearly indicates best times, recent times by everyone on track and a leaderboard of times for the day. I'd beaten my brother (whose time of 34.408 seconds was itself very respectable), which was hardly a surprise given I'd had the unfair advantage of 16 more laps. The odd thing was that I had the fastest time of anyone who'd come to the track today. Especially odd when the staff member who'd said I'd done well observed that a lot of the others had previously visited.

That lap which felt a little bit different? It was 33.755 seconds, beating the next-fastest time by 0.289 seconds. Turned out that it was fast enough to get onto one of the leaderboards. I am officially the 15th-fastest woman at the Kurburgring in terms of fastest laps - all of those with better times having set them on second or subsequent visits. Yippee!

On discovering this, we collected our timesheets, returned the borrowed kit and left to tell Grandma what had happened. She said she never wanted to be my passenger in a road car. That's fine by me as it is unlikely I will even have a road licence any time soon ;)

I very much want to go again - and hopefully this time warm up a little quicker! Until then, my brother has the consolation of having a faster average time than me...