Rackstraw The Ultimate Professional
Andrew Rackstraw is well known for tearing up main circuit race tracks around the country in his weapon of choice, a F1600. Recently, he’s also gotten behind the wheel of a magnificent red Formula VW in a regional series at Killarney.
He goes wheel to wheel at immense speeds with some of the best talent in the country.
With the F1600 Championship yet to experience a post-Covid lockdown event, Rackstraw has kept himself busy with a wet weather masterclass around Killarney at the recent Power Series event and a healthy chunk of testing.
There is no doubt Rackstraw’s priority is currently his single seater career, but we can’t forget this young man has notched up some pretty impressive results on the National Karting scene in recent years.
So, doubling up as a source of great practice for his other racing categories and some general seat time, Rackstraw decided to show the Western Province Senior Max grid his mettle at this past weekend’s WPMC Regional Karting 3rd Round.
With rain clouds looming it looked like it would be a day of wet and dry setup, but the rain largely stayed away other than the odd drizzle.
One of those Cape sprinkles occurred just before the Senior MAX class qualifying session.
On a slippery track, Rackstraw managed fourth in the class as he was beaten out by some seriously stiff competition in the form of Jason Coetzee, Charl Visser and Tate Bishop, all of whom have National Karting as their focus in 2020.
In race 1, Rackstraw got his head down as he sought to get back into the groove of years past.
There is an asset this young man possesses and it’s called professionalism. Rackstraw prides himself on this and he is among the most focused and professional athletes in South African motorsport.
For those who may not know what this entails, let us explain. At any given time in one’s career, racing or otherwise, there comes a time when the chips are down and the outcomes look gloomy. Many will succumb to this pressure and with that, any hope of success will evaporate quicker than a pole position lap time.
A quick walk past the Rackstraw pit on race day will demonstrate the opposite. A focused driver, along with Team RacedriverSA have their sights set on one thing: going forward.
That’s what Rackstraw did in race 1 as he managed a respectable lap time and third place. He lacked around half a second a lap to the karts up front, but that wasn’t going to get him down. Onto Race 2.
What was half a second to the front in Race 1 quickly became 4 tenths in Race 2 as Rackstraw made gains forward, a direction he generally prefers.
A fourth place on the road at the checkered flag may not seem like much, but with only 2 seconds separating the top 4, Rackstraw can be proud of his efforts as he found his karting groove.
This culminated in a fine showing for Race 3. A battle any true fan would have appreciated if COVID-19 allowed such attendance. We know father Paul would have been enthralled to see his talented son once again mixing it up at the sharp end of such a talented class.
A third place at the finish line for Rackstraw and a reduced deficit to the sharp end – a mere tenth of second. That’s an impressive result against karting specialists.
As he strives to better himself at every opportunity, we can only watch on in awe of his talent and look forward to seeing him back in kart again soon.
“We didn’t feel prepared going into the weekend and were hoping for more treacherous conditions to mix the field up. However, we were happy with the pace that progressed during the race day.,” Rackstraw concluded.
