Drizzle was keeping the track from drying out early in the morning as we arrived, but if all the weather forecasts were to be believed, this would be as bad as it got.
Wets were not a realistic option and all bar one team opted for slicks at
the start of the race.
Before that we added some weight to the kart - only 500grms - and after queuing for the weighbridge for too long got out in practice a little bit late.
After Thomas had done a few laps and we had evened up the tyre pressures to 12 and 13psi front and rear, James went out and qualified up in 6th position.
At the start of the race he dropped a couple of positions as TT Racing and then Vivoss Racing came past.
The track was still greasy in parts and intermittent rain was affecting different sections in different ways.
For the most part James was being cautious but felt well in control tagging on to the end of the main bunch.
But - now there was just a bit more rain on the far part of the circuit and TT Racing was off at the end of the main straight. James braked and found he had no grip at all and shot onto the grass only to meet TT Racing coming back towards the circuit.
A head-on collision was avoided but our right wheel hit their chassis.
This brought the tyre off the wheel, bent the steering column, bent the stub axle and king pin bolt and finally mangled a track rod.
Thomas came out at speed with the trolley and we got the kart back to the pits.
There we found that our spare stub axle was the wrong size, so spent quite some time trying to make the old one work.
But it was too bent and there was no way that it was going to bend back again without some serious force being applied.
So we went off to KKC's workshops to se if we could use their equipment only to be told by Nick that he had a spare Gillard stub axle in stock.
We bought it gratefully and put it back on the kart, though we had to re-use
the bent king pin bolt.
This lost us the best part of an hour, and it seemed that the only thing to do was to get some driving time in, and to test some different set ups.
Thomas went out for a good stint of over 40 minutes getting down to a best time on two occasions of 49.21s
After that we went for shorter spells changing the wheelbase size and altering the tyre pressures.
After a bit James took over the testing and finally with some higher tyre pressures up to 16psi on the rear we got a lap time of 48.75s
The race ended and we were credited with 12th - not quite last, but all in all, pretty disappointing.
Full results are here. Better luck next time?
