It was foul weather - lots of wind and rain - and not quite light when James arrived at the circuit at 8:00am. Thomas arrived a few moments later, and since there was already wreckage of one awning littering the pits, we set ourselves up in the lee and comparative shelter of TT Sport.
We were planning to run higher gearing than before but in view of the weather we went back to the ratios we had used here before. This would give us a low top speed but in the wet it was more important to have power available out of the slow corners.
In practice,
Thomas tested with the front bar in and then out and went faster in the
second set up so left it like that. Tyre pressures were front 19psi and rear
12psi
James went out for a few laps and then Tho2 (10 pt)mas qualified us in a really excellent 4th position.
At the start, Thomas moved up into 3rd for a lap or so, getting the jump on TT Sport (34).
But taking a pragmatic view of the conditions he decided to play it safe and over the next few laps dropped down to sixth.
But he was going well getting down to 62.056s on lap 13 and generally looking good.
At about the 20 minute mark, James sloped off to race control to see if he could see the current lap times - he couldn't; there was still a problem with the computer - and when he came out again there was no sign of Thomas on the track.
It took James too long to locate the stricken kart on the top corner and to then get back to the pits, collect the trolley and get round the circuit to where Thomas was waiting with the rescued front wheel and stub.
Back in the pits we fitted a new stub axle assembly, refueled the kart and sent James out for his first drive.
The stop together with the vagaries of the computer timing system which Thomas spent some time sorting out with Chris York, had dropped us down to plumb last. But once the timing system was back in action again we were credited with fifteenth place and rising.
Nobody was
overtaking us, that was for certain, and James was doing a fair amount of
overtaking himself. He did have a spin at the beginning of the straight
leading up the hill and a brief excursion over the grass at the end of that
straight, when TT Sport got past again, but he caught and re-took them
quite quickly and in general was probably as fast as anybody else out there.
The track was very gradually drying and towards the end of his session dry lines were beginning to form on some of the corners.
Still too early to change back to slicks - another ten laps and it would have been worth thinking about - but there was the ever possible threat of more rain to come. And James had now done 94 laps so couldn't stay out any longer without running out of fuel.
So Thomas was out now, still on wets on a rapidly drying track, with even some sunshine showing from time to time. We had to stop twice more for fuel and the key parameter was to keep Thomas out for long enough so that we could divide the remaining time into two sessions.
As the track dried our times came down into the low 54 seconds and the tyres were wearing very thin. Though mainly the rear ones not the fronts.
James, in the pits, dithered about bringing him in for a tyre change for probably just a bit too long, but he was concerned once again about the weather. However on lap 136 after about 40 minutes he waved Thomas in and we did a reasonable tyre change in 293s.
James took over the driving and after a very tentative first lap as he discovered how much grip he had, was immediately faster than we had been on wets by a margin of 3 seconds within 4 laps - just proving the point that we should have changed earlier.
He was driving OK though there were now karts who were going faster than him - if only a little.
On lap 171 he got our fastest lap of the race at 49.19
The difficulties
with the timing systems had meant that it was impossible to be sure where we
were in the field but we were probably around 8th or 9th and given the
distance to the next team we were unlikely to move much higher.
After a bit under an hour Thomas signaled another pit stop and with no tyres to change we were through in 140s
That stop dropped us to 10th but we soon made up places to 8th until on lap 222 a sudden burst of rain sent karts spinning everywhere.
Not us! And Thomas took a gamble to come straight into the pits for wet tyres.
Fortunately James was ready for him and although we had trouble with the spacers on the front right wheel we got Thomas out again in a reasonable time - and in bright sunshine! The rain had stopped as quickly as it had started and we had lost the gamble.
Thomas' fastest times on slicks had been 50.05s but now the best he managed was 51.10s an interesting indication of how much slower the wets are.
After the changeover we were still 8th but with the slower tyres Ppliance Maintenance were catching us and after an abortive attempt at overtaking which landed them in the tyre wall, they passed us just a couple of laps from the end.
So 9th it was and an undistinguished end to our season. We were dogged by unreliability throughout but the comforting aspect was that when we did go we went well!
So we look forward to better things in 2010. The 2009 Championship results are here and the race results here.
