Difference between revisions of "Shane Walsh"

Revision as of 01:53, 11 September 2014

Shane Walsh is an American driver who currently drives in the F3RWRS for ZombieKart. He had very little racing experience until his debut in F3RWRS and was a family friend of ZombieKart's founder.

Racing Career

F3RWRS

Virtually nobody had heard of Walsh prior to the the start of the F3RWRS for 2014. When ZombieKart announced their intention to enter three cars, their first two drivers were reasonably well qualified to drive in the series, with a former rally and sportscar driver (Humbert Moyenmoutier) and a karting legend who never found a break (Roberto Zayas). However, when Walsh was announced as third driver, his presentation consisted only of "some guy from America".

In pre-season testing, it became clear the season would be difficult for the team, with all three drivers in the bottom 11. However, Walsh surprised a few experts by setting laps consistently quicker than those set by Zayas, although he was understandably beaten by the far more experienced Moyenmoutier.

The start of the season went as expected, with the team nowhere near the front. At Adelaide, the reverse-grid second race allowed Walsh and Zayas to finish third and fourth, with Zayas ahead. However, those were the only points scored by the team in the first three rounds. All except for race 3 at Laguna Seca. Shane and Iulian Pitea made the gamble to start with a very heavy fuel load without pitting at all. It seemed like the gamble would work and the two were dominating the race, until they ran out of fuel with just two laps to go. Walsh picked up a consolation point for fastest lap.

Moyenmoutier, meanwhile, had failed to score a single point, and was fired mid-season. He was replaced by Dan Greenlaw, who immediately started pulling the team higher up the order. He finished second in his first race, which gave the team a morale boost. While Walsh was unable to finish the first two races, he finished ninth in race 3, just outside the points and scoring his second-best finish ever.

The next round at Spa would turn out to be the highlight of Shane's season. Starting were he left off at the Norisring, he finished ninth in race one. Thanks to some attrition and a chaotic race 2, Shane finally made it into the points again, with fifth place, allowing him to start in second place for race 3. In the race, he showed some decent pace, although not on par with the leaders, and finished fourth. Amazingly, he also managed to score the fastest lap of the race, capping an 8-point weekend, the most a ZombieKart driver would score over a season.

Sadly, Shane was unable to continue his streak, and a retirement in race 2 at Shanghai meant that for the first time, he failed to qualify for race 3. He finished out of the points at the Surfers SuperPrix.

Shane proved to be an excellent qualifier, regularly starting race 1 over five spots ahead of his teammates, including two consecutive top-ten grid positions in Germany and Belgium. His dominance over his teammates was broken by Greenlaw, but Shane still ended up top qualifier for ZombieKart in five rounds out of seven.

This didn't go unnoticed and ZombieKart announced that Walsh would be the team's second driver in 2015 alongside Greenlaw.

Complete F3RWRS results

An * denotes the current season.