Whilton Mill April 15th 2007
Round 2 OEKC Summer Series
It's always a bit of a stretch to get up at 5:30 in the morning to get to the circuit on time, but this time the team had only returned from skiing in Canada the previous afternoon and were operating on Vancouver time - which meant that as far as they were concerned it was eight hours earlier.
Not much to do to the kart except change the tyres and we had Tim Bonfield to help us.
James was well over the weight limit when we weighed the kart so we chopped some lead off the seat. He was still well over, so the seat has gone back to its maker for a re-design of its weights system - it was beginning to look a bit scrappy anyway. Meanwhile Thomas and Tim modified the clips to make latching and unlatching them easier.
Once the mist cleared it was obviously going to be an unseasonably hot day for the time of year - but quite nice after sub-zero Canada.
Practice went reasonably well, with James qualifying in 6th on the grid after trying out a few chassis changes and ending up with the rear bar in. The front tyres looked as if they were suffering a bit, but we reckoned they would settle down in the race.
Thomas was to have the first drive and we agreed that he would pace himself and probably drop back a bit at the start. "Alternatively" said James as a throwaway remark " you can just blast to the front and stay there".
At the start, Thomas blasted to the front being beaten to the lead only by the Billand of Saxon 1.
In the first few chaotic laps he stayed out of trouble and in front and once all the handicaps had been applied he was up into a good 2nd and looking very comfortable.
Within the first half dozen laps he had got his time down into the 40s and on lap twelve achieved his personal best of 40.67s
He was looking good and continued to do so until about lap 25 when he started to drop back. The pit crew assumed he was reverting to our initial race plan, but in fact the front tyres were shredding themselves at an alarming rate. It made driving the kart much more difficult with substantially less front end grip and was killing the lap times by about a second a lap.
We were back in fourth now and coming to the end of Thomas' first hour. At 64.5mins of racing we were back up to second as other teams pitted and we signalled Thomas in - only for him to run out of petrol at the top of the hill. Thomas got out and started pushing across the grass to be joined by Tim who took over the pushing back to the fuel bay.
Thomas realised that the front tyres were not going to last the distance so as we re-fuelled we arranged a new strategy to come in again after half an hour by which time the pit crew would have got another(worn) set of fronts ready to which we would change, and we would also take out the rear bar which Tom reckoned was the culprit for the tyre wear.
James was in the kart now, but it refused to start - we hadn't blown the fuel through after it ran out. Having done that, the engine went and James was off but without the vent pipe connected so we lost a bit of fuel through that for the first few laps.
We had probably lost about three or four laps over and above what we would have lost by simple re-fuelling and driver change, and were now in 6th place.
After twenty minutes we brought James back in for the tyre change and more fuel to enable him to run for another hour.
This went pretty smoothly but it cost us another four or five laps. And James had forgotten to re-connect the fuel vent pipe.
With replacement fronts the kart was back on form and as James got used to the radically changed handling his times began to come down.
We were in 9th as Box Tech came past and for a time it looked as if they had the legs on us. But James speeded up and caught them again and over the next few laps swapped positions with them several times. Eventually Box Tech got held by a back marker, James went past them both, and with clear track began to put in some fast laps to pull away.
By lap 160 we were back up to 5th and on lap 185 James got our best lap of the day at 40.62s
He was getting consistent lap times in 40s range when he came up behind Le Maverick. Setting himself to overtake at the Boot, James just clipped Le Maverick's back bumper and somehow this all escalated into a spinning Le Maverick kicking James into the tyres and pulling off the rear bumper. James's fault entirely but an excess of enthusiasm and bad luck rather than downright stupidity - or there again....but anyway, it happened. James hooked the bumper back on and drove round the rest of the lap back to the pits, where we re-fuelled, did a jury rig on the bumper and got Thomas back in the driving seat for another session.
Another four laps wasted and we had dropped to 8th, but with just over two hours to go, we should just manage it with one more fuel stop.
And Tom was driving steadily up the leader board so that by the time the pit crew were thinking about a re-fuel he had regained 5th place.
At 65 minutes precisely we signalled Thomas in and at the same moment he signalled that he wanted to come in - worried about the fuel level.
This was a decent fuel driver change for the first time in the race and in fact one of our best fuel and driver stops at Whilton.
We didn't loose any places so James was able to continue where Thomas left off and by lap 300 or so we had got third place. On the other hand after half an hour's racing James was getting very worried about the fuel level and backed off to start driving for economy rather than speed.
As Saxon 1 bent a stub axle we moved into second but with eight more laps to run it didn't look as if we would have enough fuel to run to the end. James took the risk of slowing right down and we lost 2nd place to the Billand of Red Mist Racing by three seconds at the end as James completed a slow 56s lap.
James' sigh of relief at not running out of fuel was echoed by a stuttering from the engine as it did just that. By the time he got back to the pit lane the tank was dry and the kart had to be pushed onto the weighbridge.
Lots of "if onlys" for this race but it seems to have been a difficult race for all the teams and to end up with 2nd Rotax and 3rd in Class is an excellent result. It's enough to give us overall lead of the Championship by four points, which is a nice bit of icing on the cake. We can also console ourselves that we dealt well with the problems as they arose and made the right decisions in the circumstances throughout the race. Our thanks to Tim for helping us so efficiently in this. Full results are here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g