Buckmore Park Winter Series Round 2 ; November 2nd 2002
Finishing positions:
Round 2: 6th overall and 4th in Clubmans
The team was down to just Thomas and James for this race - the first time we had fielded only a two man team for an endurance race - but it was only 3hrs so it wasn't going to be any sort of problem - was it!
The track was wet as the team assembled from Wales and Cambridge at 8am and the weather forecasters were adamant that rain would come later on in the day.
We put on a worn set of wets that had already been used in two races and Thomas went out first to check that the engine modifications he had done worked OK.
After a couple of laps James took over and came in after 10mins complaining of understeer. Thomas then went out to qualify and gained the distinction of putting the team at the top of the qualifying board with a 48s lap when he took a short cut for safety reasons. Once the timekeepers had caught up with him we were back on the penultimate row of the grid.
With less than 30mins of unsatisfactory practice we weren't feeling very happy.
The strategy was to get James out first on the intermediates for about 20mins by which time the track should be dry enough for slicks. Then Thomas would take over for a full hour, then James for an hour and the end session would be mopped up by Thomas.
At the start James stayed on the track, avoided the crashers, moved up a place and then settled down.
But before he had a chance to doze off he found he was rapidly moving up the field. The Wright R1 had found the conditions it really excels in and was now as fast or faster than any other kart on the circuit.
James just went on overtaking the karts ahead of him without realising that he was nearing the front of the pack, and Thomas decided to keep him out there as long as he looked competitive
On lap 50 James got the fastest lap of our race at 46.046.
Then he got punted off twice at the hairpin at the end of the pits straight by downright bad driving by teams who he would have no hesitation in naming if he could remember who they were.
Despite this by the end of the first hour James was in the lead and feeling a bit bemused about strategy and what was going on and how much longer the tyres would last.
The question now was what we should do about the tyres. The intermediates were definitely shot by this time and the obvious thing would be to change to slicks. On the other hand we knew it was soon going to rain hard and in fact it had started spitting from about the 50mins stage. So the alternative was to stay on the intermediates and hope that they lasted another few laps until the rain really came and then swap to wets - we save ourselves a tyre change. But of course there was no means of discussing this so neither Tom nor James knew what the other was thinking.
Thomas, having deliberately kept James out there over the hour mark for PR purposes, brought James in at last, a few seconds over the hour.
He was over the weighbridge at 175kg dead, and motored down to the pits making what he thought were interrogatory hand signals about whether he should go to the pits for new tyres or the fuel bay for fuel.
Thomas interpreted this as an indication that we should stay on the wasted intermediates so pushed him into the fuel bay at the same time asking if we should stay on the same tyres. James interpreted this as a decision that we should not change to slicks and mumbled agreement.
The result was that Thomas was a genuine 4th but struggling with tyres that should have been in the dustbin by now.
And unfortunately the track stayed resolutely dry despite continuing rain drops.
After 20mins of this James was getting seriously worried about the tyres - as was Thomas - and as the race was put under full course yellows James did an entirely unintelligible dance on the side of the track to indicate his concern and to show that he had new tyres ready.
Thomas took this as a signal to come in and in a frenetically inefficient tyre change, with help from Jeff Johnson - thanks, Jeff - we changed to slicks re-fuelled and sent him out again.
We were down to about 11th now but with lap times a bit quicker on slicks Thomas started to move back up the field.
Very gradually the track was getting damper despite James changing his prayer for rain to a demand for dry weather and it was only to be expected that after another 35mins it started to rain in earnest.
Thomas came in for a good change to wets and James took over with just enough fuel to run to the end in a bit over an hour's time.
The track was soon awash and although progress was not as startling as it had been, we were moving up through the grid despite some careless spins.
The engine had been working pretty well all day, responding to the changes Tom had made since Clay Pigeon, although he complained that it was beginning to bang at the end of the main straight.
But now it was running in very wet conditions and we had forgotten change the air filter to its wet position, so we were slightly concerned that we were going to suffer from water in the carburettor.
The worst fears seemed to be confirmed when the engine gave a mighty burp 15 mins from the end of the race. It then wouldn't pull full revs and sounded very unhappy, so James backed off in the hope it would recover. Luckily after a couple of laps it was back on song, but James was driving to finish now.
In retrospect he was being a bit too cautious and at the end SZR were only 3 seconds adrift and catching..........
He was also a bit worried about coming in underweight given how much fuel he had left, but luckily he had absorbed enough rainwater to take him over the weight limit.
We finished 8th on the track but then Zaremba and Roker were both disqualified for having less than a litre of fuel left in their tanks at the end so we moved up to 6th overall and just off the podium for Clubmans in 4th.
It was a great result............it was massive fun..................and it was brilliant to be at the sharp end of a race at last.
Against that its made us think hard about pit to driver intercoms again and realise that race day is a whole lot easier with three competent team members!
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g