1996 Formula One World Champion Damon Hill OBE, was joined by friends, colleagues and guests at Daytona Sandown Park yesterday (Wednesday 24 June) at an adrenalin-fuelled fundraiser for Guildford-based charity, Halow, as Daytona Sandown Park hosted this event for the fourth year running.
35 teams – each with five drivers, took to Esher′s impressive 900m outdoor kart circuit in Daytona Motorsport′s super-fast Sodi RT8 pro-karts for the epic 2.5 hour endurance race to raise money for Halow – an organisation that works with young people with learning disabilities.
Damon, who is a Patron of Halow, headed up an All-Stars team consisting of talented team-mates; Williams F1 development driver Alex Lynn, Asian GT and Mission Impossible film stunt ace Ollie Milroy, Damon′s son and ex-Formula Ford driver, Josh Hill and international kart racer (but no relation) Graham Hill.
2012 FIA World Touring Car Champion Rob Huff and Brabham Racing Sam Brabham, were also present to lend their expertise and experience to the rest of the field.
‘Le Mans’ pit-stop driver changes coupled with the addition of racing ‘jokers’ – whereby teams were allowed to ‘buy’ an extra lap or ‘black flag’ a dominant team in order to gain advantage – all added to the fun factor and provided an additional money raising element.
After a gruelling and highly competitive 2.5 hours, the chequered flag was finally taken at 21:00hrs by Team Easykart UK, with Damon’s All-Star team in second and Team Rapid Response coming in third.
Once the race was over, the participants could relax and take part in the charity auction with fabulous prizes from the world of motorsport. Prizes included two premier grandstand tickets for the Formula One Santander British Grand Prix, a special edition TW Steel watch, Williams F1 Team factory tour and visit to the Williams Grand Prix Collection, signed Jordan Team racing shirt and Daytona Sandown Park exclusive event for 10 people.
“We were delighted to again host this incredible event for the fourth consecutive year” said Daytona Motorsport Director, Jim Graham. “The Halow project is a fantastic charity and very close to the heart of Damon Hill who is one of motorsport’s great ambassadors.”
Damon Hill added, “It was another brilliant day for Halow at Daytona. Sandown Park is the perfect venue to host such a fun afternoon of racing, and once again the support for this incredible charity has been humbling. It was great to see so many people come and get involved, and to see the smiles on the faces of the young people that Halow works tirelessly to help.”
Daytona Sandown Park is the perfect venue to host an event of this magnitude. Easily able to accommodate three to 300 participants in variety of racing formats, this facility is the perfect choice for corporate, leisure or high level professional kart racing. Nestled within Sandown Park’s famous horse racing track in Esher, Daytona Sandown Park is widely hailed as one of the best kart venues in the South East and the only one of its kind within the M25. This amazing facility has been offering outdoor professional karting for 5-year-olds and upwards for over two decades and is still growing in popularity.