At 8 o'clock in the morning the
weather was still dry and with no wind, but very very gradually the moisture
content of the air increased to a wet misting. But by the time practice started
most teams opted for slicks and we found the circuit perfectly driveable in
these conditions.
Thomas had rebuilt the steering
since the last race and fitted a new softer axle and overall the kart was going
well given the conditions. We had 15 and 13psi in the tyres, and the front
bar out - we did try putting it in but we went slower.
Chris York had promised us that the
weather was going to improve and although some teams had switched to wets or
intermediates to get a good qualifying lap, nearly all them were on slicks on
the dummy grid.
That is until the rain increased,
invoking panic in the pit lane as teams started to change tyres again.
We decided to stay
aloof from the mayhem and to gamble on remaining on slicks and as a result moved up to sixth
on the grid from the lowly 12th that James had qualified us in, as teams were
sent to the back of the grid for not being ready in time as they changed tyres.
This was the wrong decision as it
turned out and at the start, everyone with wets surged to the front and blew off into the
distance.
Thomas meanwhile was valiantly
struggling with a fairly uncontrollable kart dropping down to 14th place in the
process.
Although for a moment it did look as
if it would brighten up, after fifteen laps we bowed to the inevitable and
brought Thomas in for a tyre change.
This went pretty smoothly,
especially with the help of
Russell - from
Box Tech.
We re-fuelled as well, so that we
could have another hour's session, giving us the maximum flexibility for further
tyre changes.
Thomas had been doing 78s laps but
now with the right tyres in place his lap times dropped by 10s a lap or more and
he was soon down into the 64s and 63s.
With the extra speed we began to
make up places and were soon back to our starting grid position of 12th and then
on up the leader board to 9th just before he was due to come in for more fuel.
James left him out for as long as
possible, once again to give us flexibility although there was no question of
changing tyres at this stage.
The rain had continued to fall
throughout his session possibly very slightly lessening as time went on, but
there was still spray coming off the tyres.
We did a reasonable pit stop despite
the clutch locking as he came onto the weighbridge.
This caused us some problems in
re-starting but with a lengthy push and prolonged use of the starter motor James
got away at last.
He had a tentative start - to use a
euphemism for bad - managing to do an almost non-stopping spin on the start of
the back straight, but after that, he got down to work and continued at about
the same pace as Thomas'.
The track was steadily but oh so
slowly beginning to dry up a little now, and James expected his lap times to
come down. In fact they stayed in the same sort of range the whole time - around
64/63s with an odd 62 towards the end.
Everybody else was going
considerably quicker, but James was really struggling to make the kart do what
he wanted it to.
Near terminal understeer would
suddenly change to vicious oversteer; it wouldn't grip at all on the wet patches
- which was still most of the circuit - but would bite like a pit bull if you
managed to hit a dry spot. James tried every line he could find and tried every
technique he knew but ended up simply battling furiously for very little gain in
speed.
Although we had progressed to 7th by
now, he was really quite glad to hand over to Thomas again.
The pit stop was almost exactly the
same length as before and this time the engine started OK.
Almost instantly Thomas was 3s a lap
faster and within 10 laps he was down to the 56s.
At this stage he was probably the
fastest kart on the track and was steadily unlapping himself from one of the Box
Tech karts, among others, till we managed to get to 6th.
He had a bit of trouble with
IJC
Racing who managed to make themselves very wide but who were slower on
the back half of the circuit.
Eventually, he managed to get past,
and once that had been achieved he was away without too much trouble.
The track was definitely drying now
and very soon it would probably pay us to be on the slicks again.
The redoubtable
KKC team changed to slicks and after three or four laps were about a
second quicker than Thomas - not a huge margin and since James was worried that
the kart might still be handling like a drowning pig when he got back in, he was
quite keen to leave Thomas out there for as long as possible.
However, with just over an hour of
the race left we could now afford to bring him in, change tyres and fuel to the
end and Thomas signalled that that was what he wanted to do.
Once again
Russell gave valuable help with the change to slicks and James was out in
just over 240s
We had dropped down a place in the
change but James found the handling of the kart transformed from the earlier wet
set up.
He was able to attack really
strongly and the kart turned and handled beautifully.
His best lap was 48.93s and quite
soon he was back into 6th again.
A spinning
Box Tech forced him onto a grassy trajectory to avoid a collision but no
damage was done.
Later
IJC came past at the end of the hill as James was queuing up behind two
other slower karts.
He was a little depressed to lose
them in traffic, but was re-assured when they were later penalised for being
underweight.
By lap 148 we up up into 5th and
James was just getting down to reducing his lap times again when the clutch
finally gave out without any power transfer at all.
He managed to cruise back to the
pits and that was the end of our race just a few minutes from the finish.
It was bad luck but we were very
encouraged to find that the softer back axle we had fitted for this race seemed
to make the kart go so well. The only doubt was over it's performance in the wet
when James was driving. We shall just have to wait and see at the next
race.
7th again, makes this year's results
seem rather repetitive, but perhaps next time we can make it come together and
get on the podium once again!
TT
Racing came a well deserved 1st after
KKC generously decided not to push for the lead in the closing laps
(that's what
Nick told us, anyway......, but I have to admit that we didn't ask
Chris at
TT
for his comments...).