Bayford Meadow Round 9; September 28th 2002
Finishing positions:
Round 9: 18th overall and 9th in Clubmans
For the first time this year we managed a practice day on the day before the race, James meeting up with the rest of the the team after a night at the Travel Inn in Sittingbourne.
About three weeks earlier Tom had tapped into the long range weather forecast system used by his firm and it had predicted a scorching day, and three weeks later that's exactly what we got.
Bayford is a tricky and a very physical circuit, with very little relaxation time. So we took a bit of time to start to get used to the circuit again and a broken stud on the rear hub delayed us for a bit.
But fairly soon were down in the target area for lap times and began to change setup parameters, concentrating particularly on getting even tyre temperatures across the width of the tyre.
By the end of the day we had got down to 12psi and Richard, who had developed into the chief test driver by that stage felt that this probably gave the best results.
As always, we could have done with another hour of track time. But I suspect that that will always be true.
Saturday looked as if would be even hotter than Friday, but with only half an hour's practice before qualifying there was time only for a very brief drive by each of us. This was followed by a quick scrub of the new tyres and qualifying by Thomas in 24th place in 53.106 - that was more than half a second off our best of the previous day, but with 25 karts on it, the track was very busy and it was quite difficult to get a good flying lap.
And we've never set much store on qualifying, anyway.
Thomas started the race with the stated mission of staying out of trouble. This meant dropping back a place or so, but he was soon past GB Motorsport and all over the back of Rapido.
Frustratingly, Thomas was struggling to find enough speed to get past him and at the same time Rapido was aggressively defending his position.
At last Tom got past and away but by this time the rest of the field had disappeared off into the other half of the circuit and Thomas had a lonely time of it, but lapping quickly in the mid 52s.
We were were running a short first session in order to get out of sync with everybody else's re-fuelling, so after 30mins we brought Thomas in for a change to Richard getting the out lap over and done with in 102s - the fastest time of the race for us.
Richard had a good drive without any incidents getting our best lap of the race towards the end of his session at 52.002 - we just couldn't quite crack it into the 51s.
After 56 minutes James took over and although he got down to the mid 52s he had more laps in the 53s than the others. But...he stayed on the track..
The really hot day had failed to materialise and in fact for most of James' drive it had clouded over and it looked as if it might even rain.
Thomas went out for his second drive and over the next 55 minutes managed to lap a fraction quicker than during his first stint. We all agreed the kart felt good and very consistent, and we were certainly putting everything we could into the driving, but it just didn't translate into really competitive lap times.
We were up to 16th on occasions, but although we were driving a faultless race, an awful lot of the other teams we doing the same - and driving faster!
Richard took over with another un-impeded fuel stop and fairly quickly got caught up in a race with Rapido and Team Tec. Rapido was still driving as if the most important thing was to keep everyone else behind him rather than concentrating on driving fast. The final result of this strategy was that when two faster expert teams came through, Rapido spun in centre track collecting both Team Tec and Richard.
Richard was rocket launched over Rapido's back wheel and spun on the grass, but luckily did not sustain damage and was able to continue pretty quickly. Team Tec was not so lucky and suffered a badly bent back axle. Rapido looked as as if they had got away with it completely but were later seen in the pits with a damaged exhaust. They came last in the end.
James took over and its a tribute to the kart setup that he managed a smidgeon faster lap times than in his first session.
After our 5th re-fuelling Thomas went out for a half hour blast, followed by our last mandatory pit stop and the final 24minutes were driven by Richard.
Was that Rapido I saw getting in the way again?
At the drop of the flag we were 18th and we were all pleased with the way the kart had gone and how we had organised the racing.
The resolution next year is to try to fit in more testing but I won't be surprised if we don't manage it!
The full results are here and the final Championship results here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g