Buckmore Park; Round 2 Promax Winter Series November 22nd 2003
Finishing position: 8th
The team was back down to just Thomas and James again as Richard was off sailing some gin palace in the Caribbean - a poor excuse we thought as we set up the pits in the wet half light of a sodden Buckmore Park at 8am.
The rain was to stay with us off and on throughout the day - sometimes it was wet and the rest of the time it was just very wet.
Thomas did the testing for the half hour available and we ended up wide at the front with maximum castor and high tyre pressures. The seat was back upright again following our experiments at Bayford.
James went out on new wets for qualifying and pottered round trying to remember what he was meant to be doing when and largely failing.
He qualified us 18th in a grid of 25 in a time of 54.776. Special Racing Projects in the other 7Kart managed to go a full 2 10ths faster than anybody else to get pole, but were then disqualified for overtaking under full course yellows. Full qualifying results are here.
Given the wet weather and our previous experience at Buckmore we reckoned a tank of fuel would last us well over an hour and would allow us to race a two stop strategy. James would start and finish and Thomas would take the middle section.
At the start James more or less held position in 16th place and set about trying to get the hang of what the kart was doing when and where.
But he was struggling a bit to find any consistency.
After less than half a dozen laps the first of the full course yellows came out as a kart was retrieved from the track. This was the first of about six periods when the flags went out.........there were a lot of people not staying on the track.
We were up to 13th on lap 13 now, but not for long and for the rest of the stint James was circulating in a true 16th finally making it up to 14th before the pit stops began which temporarily promoted us to 9th.
James' best lap was 53.44 towards the end of his drive on lap 64.
Its never easy to control the pit stops at Buckmore and with only one person in the pits and no radio communication, its impossible. After 65mins on lap 69 Thomas signalled for James to come in, who then saw another kart turn into the pits just before him, so he went round again.
Even so, by the time he arrived at the fuel bay there were two karts in the queue.
Thomas made good use of the waiting time by loosening off the centre bearing on the rear axle and we were through in 159.63 seconds.
He was out a nominal 12th but almost immediately the race was slowed with full course yellows again. Having sorted that out we stabilised in 13th before climbing through the field to 8th as the second pit stop approached.
Again we got held up in the fuel bay, annoyingly by another team blocking the exit with a stalled kart. But we were through in 152.87 seconds with Thomas still driving after we decided that since he was going well and not feeling his neck under any stain he should stick with it.
His best time had been 53.28 so far in lap 107 but he was now consistently in the 53s and down to 53.12 in lap 144.
For a couple of laps we were 7th but fell back to 10th as the pit stops finished. However he was going well and soon managed to overtake Zero Racing to give us a true 9th.
Then one of the Allied teams came past and we were in 10th place for the next 38 laps.
It looked as if that's where we would finish but just six laps from the end, we were again under full yellows and as we emerged from that Thomas put his foot down to get our best lap of the race at 52.57 and 8th position.
It had been a good race, where everything had worked well and we had stayed on the track and out of trouble. At Bayford in the next round we just need to find a bit more speed as well. Full results are here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g