Bayford Meadow; Round 3 Promax Winter Series December 22nd 2003
Finishing position: 22nd
It wasn't actually raining as the team assembled at 8 o'clock but it was wet on the ground and the forecast was for high winds and rain.
James had a cold and was doubtful if he could sneeze, stream and drive at the same time.
On the plus side Richard was back driving again.
Our tyre supplier hadn't turned up so we were left without any new wets but we had a set which had done one race which still had a good amount of tread on them so decided to race with them.
We were also hoping to borrow a new carburettor from the same source. We weren't too worried by it at the time but in retrospect that would almost certainly have cured our subsequent problems.
James went out first in practice to see how he felt and after a couple of laps came back in to say he would have a go at racing and that the kart felt fine except for slow pickup out of the tighter corners. We assumed that would clear itself once we got the engine up to temperature and put in a softer plug to help it along.
Over the remaining 30 minutes of practice and qualifying we made some changes to the track width front and back and ended up with something that Thomas was OK about but which Richard maintained was really nasty. But there was no more time and we just had to live with it.
We qualified 20th
At the start - with James driving - the engine just emitted large amounts of blue smoke without any apparent effect on the overall speed of the kart.
We were dropping back down the grid and the engine simply wasn't picking up from the first of the hairpins in the midfield and it wasn't a lot better anywhere else.
On the second lap, ZLR parked themselves in the middle of the pits bend and James slid sideways into them squashing the side pod but otherwise just bouncing off and onwards round the track without stopping.
The side pod itself complained for the next few laps but then recovered.
The expected rain had started an hour or so earlier and hadn't stopped since, so James just kept his head down and plodded round for the next 45 mins. The high winds had also arrived to finally defeat the awning which had to be taken down before it self destructed.
Best lap was 72.070 but with the engine getting worse rather than better his lap times at the end were even slower.
Richard took over but came in after half a dozen laps to get something done about the engine.
We took off the air filter put in a new one and turned the airbox upside down.
It was better initially - though not good - so over the rest of the race we tried changing the plug (again) the air filter (again), the fuel pump, the jetting and finally the fuel - James having been despatched to the nearest Shell garage to get some new Optimax. We also stripped down the carburettor to check for dirt.
It was probably while Thomas was driving that he got our best lap of the day at 70.877 - a one-off blast that was way better than our average but 5 seconds off the leaders.
Other than that the times simply reflected the poor engine performance as did our 22nd place in the results.
We packed up as quickly as possible and went off for a post mortem over a cup of tea. During discussions it became apparent that although we could complete the rest of the Winter Series, beyond that, the continued existence of the team was in considerable doubt.
Altogether a rather unsatisfactory day...........
Alan Woods more detailed report is here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g