Conor Daly – The Robo-Pong 200

Noblesville, Ind. (September 29, 2008) – This year I have been mainly focused on open-wheel car racing. But there is one big karting event that I look forward to every year. The Robo-Pong 200 is a 200-mile endurance go-kart race run at the Newcastle Motorsports Park. In the last three years, there have always been over 80 entries for this single race.

This year I was on the Racer of Tomorrow Too team. My teammates were fellow Team USA Scholarship winner Josef Newgarden, and Brandon Newey. However, Josef and I were not the only Team USA Scholarship winners in the race, Bryan Herta was also competing!

Our plan was to run two karts for three drivers. Josef and I had one kart each, while our third driver, Brandon Newey, would switch between both karts. The plan was for me to do a double stint and Josef to do a single stint and then for Brandon to get in. So I did my double stint and came in for my pit stop. When I came in however, Brandon was still in Josef’s kart! So I then had to go out AGAIN. After doing over 100 laps I was pretty fatigued.

One of the main reasons I was fatigued is that my kart had an imbalanced right-front tire causing a severe vibration in the front at speed. This caused my hands to get severe blisters. But I had to drive to keep us in the race so I got back in and kept pushing. After doing another stint I came in and finally got a break. Brandon hopped in and set off. Unfortunately, Brandon had made contact with another driver on the first lap of his stint resulting in a flat tire. After another pit stop, he was back on the track. But we had to make one more stop to make the end of the race. Even though my hands were in pain, I decided I wanted to finish the race. We ended up finishing eighth. The kart was a struggle to drive the whole race but it was fairly reliable which gave us a pretty good result.

Overall the weekend was a lot of fun considering there were many Indy Car and Indy Lights Series drivers competing. It was fun to go head to head with them and show what this year’s Team USA Scholarship drivers can do!