Alfie Garford from Maxey scoops two awards at the British Kart Championships

Maxey’s rising star Alfie Garford returned with a couple of coveted accolades from his maiden appearance at the British Kart Championships over the weekend.

The 11-year-old was awarded the top rookie crown and also gained the fastest lap time on his way to an eighth place finish overall at the event held at Kimbolton.

Alfie had gone into the weekend on a high with a fifth place finish and a brace of fourth spots in the pre-championship race meetings.

This had given the youngster a confidence boost to be able to push for some top finishes in the championship, even though it is only his first year in the class.

After a day of testing for all the drivers on Friday to fine tune their set-ups, the action got underway on the Saturday with qualifying and two heat races to determine the grid for Sunday’s finals.

Garford qualified in fifth place but was just 0.05 of a second off pole position.

This put him in good stead and, with decent results in the following two heats, he was classified in third position for the Sunday finals.

This was even more impressive considering the 11-year-old is racing against the best drivers in the country up to 16 years of age who have been competing in the British Championship for a number of years.

A glorious day for the final saw Alfie starting on the inside on grid three where he got sandwiched in on the first corner and lost some places.

This put him on the back foot and over the next three laps the theme continued as he found himself outside the top 10 and a long way off the front pack.

However, he got his head down and put in some qualifying pace laps to reel in and overtake as many karts as he could and in the end he managed to claw his back up to eighth position.

Alfie said: “It’s a shame I didn’t get the chance to battle at the front after a bad start as I was confident of a top five finish.

“But we came away with a good haul of points towards the championship and gained some experience of the challenges of competing at the top level in British karting.”

The second round of the British Championships will be at Fulbeck Kart Club near Grantham on October 9-11 where Alfie will be trying to improve on his current seventh place championship position.