Bayford Meadows Winter Series Round 3 ; December 7th 2002
Finishing positions:
Round 3: 6th overall and 2nd in Clubmans
Neil Dodson had very kindly agreed to lend us a 7Kart for this race. Not only that but he put our engine on it, set it up for us and turned up for a day's testing on the Friday before the race on Saturday.
It was a horrid day - bitter wind, damp track, going on wet.
We put on some old wets and Neil went out for some skating. Then Richard went out and came back within a couple of laps saying the tyres really were hopeless.
So on with new tyres and on with the testing. But we soon hit problems with the engine. The first was when we noticed coolant was seeping out from the top elbow and in fact both the top and bottom elbows were loose.We reset them with loctite and after about an hour Thomas set off again only to stop out on the track saying that the engine temperature was well over 100. We cured this by re-setting the Alfano to read Centigrade rather than Fahrenheit but the elbows were still leaking even after we had another go at the top one with PTFE tape.
So we just had to go on re-filling the radiator for the rest of the day.
Then the engine started misfiring badly while James was trying (unsuccessfully) to come to terms with the chassis. Changing the battery and spark plug made no difference. There was nothing wrong with the fuel feed or the jetting. So we drained the fuel, put in a new batch using different oil and changed the air filter. That finally made the engine run properly. We think it was the oil.....so we tipped the remainder of the mix into James car....
We had lost a lot of testing time now, so we put Thomas back in the driving seat in the worsening rain and got on with it.
But we weren't making a lot of progress and in the final session of the day GP Racing went past and away from us without too much of a problem.
Neil was still critical of the tyres so James was despatched to Dartford Karting to buy a new set while the rest of the team packed up and wondered what to do on Saturday to get the kart to go faster. The engine was taken to the excellent workshop at Bayford to have both elbows re-fitted.
Saturday dawned with only fractionally better weather than Friday had closed with, but we were down at the circuit before 7:30 changing tyres to the new set and getting the kart ready for racing..
For practice we decided to concentrate on getting the kart set up and not worry about track time for James or Thomas, so we put Richard out and in a concentrated flurry of activity Neil changed rear width, tyre pressures and castor before running out of time. As he said, we achieved more in that half hour of practice and qualifying than we had in the whole of the previous day.
But it was enough and Richard got our best qualifying position ever with 6th on the grid - Neil would have liked another twenty minutes development time, but that's life.........
The decision had been made to put James out first despite his lack of track time, and we could only hope that he would just stay on the track.
He didn't................at the first corner as he was moving up a place, Autotekk spun in front of him, James braked too hard in order to avoid them and spun in sympathy.
He got going again and began a gradual progress up the field, improving as he got used to the chassis but being a bit tentative about overtaking.
Then he spun again...............and again.....in fact never before has he overtaken the same karts so many times in one session. But at least he was overtaking them and eventually got past Special Racing Projects before being called in at the hour mark.
After a good pit stop Richard took over. With the benefit of other team's pit stops we had been sixth before James came in and now we had dropped a few places but Richard had really got to grips with the new chassis and immediately posted times a second or so quicker than before.
The weather had stayed pretty much the same for the first hour and the track had dried only fractionally. It was still horribly slippery but Richard was making excellent progress through the field, his times being comparable to the better driven R2 teams.
Thomas took over at the second hour and by now the track began to show signs of getting dryer.
He was able to significantly increase his speed and his lap times came down steadily - except on lap 146 when he suddenly dropped 2 seconds off his previous time. It was another few laps before he managed that time again.
Meanwhile a tussle with SZR ended when Dave, who was driving took both himself and Tom out at the end of the short straight. Luckily Thomas was able to get going again very quickly while Dave was later seen snoozing restlessly on the grass bank while the remainder of his team caught up with the fact that he was no longer circulating.
His main target now was 2nd placed Cobra ASM who were about 10 seconds ahead with half an hour to go. Relentlessly he reeled them in and finally overtook them with about 10 minutes to spare.
This left him with Mad Max directly in front and Tom wasn't sure whether they were ahead of him in the race as well as the track. So he overtook them, just to make sure.
Only to loose the position again a lap or so later.
Not one to give in easily Tom attacked again on the last two laps, with a last ditch effort onto the grass at the beginning of the carousel and a fastest lap of our race at 56.338 - that's a faster lap than Titan managed - and they won the race!
But he didn't quite make it, and it didn't matter anyway, and it was much to the relief of pit management that he got past the chequered flag without crashing in the attempt.
We finished 2nd in the Clubmans - GP were first - and 6th overall. Our best result ever, a really good end to the year and a really brilliant effort by Neil to get us there.
Now we have to decide which chassis to go for. The team met for a long discussion afterwards and after a full exchange of views it was decided that a sub committee of the Eastern Region branch should make an executive decision after a couple of good nights' sleep.
The full results of the race are here and a snippet from Motorsport News. Whatever we buy, our main aim is to be back for the next round on January 18th at Lydd with a new chassis and a rejuvenated Rotax from George Robinson.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g