We were planning to use the same set
of tyres as we had at the previous round so there was little we had to do when
we arrived at the circuit.
The main part of the preparatory
work which Thomas had already completed, consisted of fitting one of the new type Rotax clutches after the failure
of the old one at the last race - we hoped that this one would last longer than
the old drum and shoes system.
Thomas did the main part of the
testing in practice - we brought the front end in by 10mm and loosened off the
third bearing on the rear axle - and James took over to do the last few minutes of
qualifying.
He ended with a lap of 48.8s in
breezy, dry conditions with patches of sun showing through from time to time.
As it happened we never discovered what grid
position this gave us, because we were still doing a last minute change to the
jetting as the dummy grid closed.
This meant we started from the back
of the grid which didn't worry us particularly - fast starting has never been
our forte.
James made a reasonable start
making up several places and was quickly up to 11th.
At this point he got bogged down
behind a couple of slower Karts and was a bit too cautious about overtaking.
First
IJC Racing came past in a typically flamboyant manoeuvre and James
hung back to see if he would take out the kart in front or alternatively
make a way past that James could follow through on. But he wasn't going to
take any risks
by getting too close.
This allowed HBC to come up on
the inside at the end of the main straight as James was politely queuing up
behind everybody else. Meanwhile, frustratingly, IJC didn't seem to making
much of an effort to move on.......
Eventually the log jam cleared
and James had clear air again and was able to move up into 11th again and
then on to 10th and finally 8th on about lap 38.
On lap 31 he almost got the lap
time down into 47s with a lap of 38.02, but although he got a few more at
this level he couldn't quite crack the 47s barrier.
This became academic, as at this
point he was flagged for a loose exhaust and Thomas brought him in.
We tightened up the exhaust
mounting bolt, re-fuelled and got Thomas out again in 243 seconds but the
problem now, was that we had had to pit much earlier than we wanted, meaning
that we would have to do an extra refuel some 45 minutes from the end.
The pit stop had dropped us
right down to the bottom of the order again into 15th place but Thomas was
soon making up places driving very consistently and by about lap 116 we were
up into 7th.
James was leaving him out there
as long as possible to give us the maximum flexibility in case of other
problems and indeed the exhaust still looked a bit shaky.
After 69 minutes James called
him in and this time the pit stop was completed in 175 seconds.
James was going well and after
about 25 laps of being stuck in 9th he moved steadily up the leader board.
But on lap 190 he came up
against
HBC at the end of the main straight and was moving fast enough to
get alongside at the end of the short straight before Inkermans.
Unfortunately
HBC either didn't
see him or felt he had the right to take the racing line and the resulting
collision sent James across the grass on a non stopping excursion and HBC
had to retire with quite a lot of damage.
They were quite annoyed by this
and later the driver in particular had a bit to say on the subject,
most of which seemed to end in "...you fucking wanker". A pity really....but
it was a racing accident, in our view (also confirmed by a following team
who saw what happened) and it's never very useful to threaten physical
violence or use bad language. And never very productive to fight for
position on the track if you are laps and laps behind the kart that is
overtaking you. Having said that, all accidents are avoidable and if James
had been more cautious and hadn't mistakenly relied on
HBC to do the
sensible thing, then it wouldn't have happened, so James apologised -
profusely - to them for this.
There was some damage to our
back bumper but we were able to continue and on lap 208 James got our
fastest lap of the race at
47.76s which was fourth fastest of all the teams.
By the time he came in on lap
223 we were up to 3rd briefly and even a
fairly long pit stop of 340s, as we
replaced and tightened the exhaust mount again and tried to fend off the
HBC
crew, only dropped us a couple of places.
Thomas was out now for his final
drive though suffering a little with his neck and feeling generally a little
less than perfect. But he soon found a good pace with some fast 48s laps
which he could maintain with consistency and safety.
We were doing more than hold our
own in 5th place with one more stop to do - the final stint would be the
portion of James' first drive which we had cut short because of the exhaust
mounting problem.
After just short of an hour
James readied to bring Thomas in, and was busy staring vacantly into the
distance when Chris from
TT dug him in the ribs and pointed out that our kart was parked on
the top bank by Inkermans and needed to be rescued.
Once we had got it back to the
pits, we discovered that the new clutch had destroyed itself, the machined
centre part having broken into four pieces.
So that was an end of it, and as
the race progressed we dropped inevitably down the list to finish at 11th.