Llandow; Rounds 5 & 6 MSA BEKC June 21st 2003
Finishing position: 15th and 9th
James only lives ten minutes away from the track and each year we race here he swears (usually after a disastrous outing) that he'll learn the track properly before the next time.
He never does.........
Anyway, this year Thomas brought the kart down from Cambridge on the Thursday evening to do a day's testing with James, leaving Richard to arrive late on Friday evening.
As usual, Thomas had arranged for the Welsh weather to dry up and it was beautifully warm and sunny with a bit of wind at the track.
We fairly quickly put down some reasonable lap times, but still needed to improve a bit, so spent some time trying to get a better combination of castor, width and tyre pressures.
James experimented with using a smaller seat inside the older one which was interesting and more comfortable, if rather odd (too high) but ultimately slower, so that idea was scrapped.
The engine was sounding good and going well, until around midday when George from Geographics had a moment of indecision about overtaking on the pits bend, left it too late and rode up the back of our kart, coming down hard on the exhaust. Thomas immediately pulled into the pits and we spent some time re-fitting and sealing the exhaust.
George commiserated and apologised, which was nice of him.
Then we went out again, only to find that we were still getting strange noises from the engine - as if the exhaust was still blowing, but we couldn't see it.
We stripped it all down and re-fitted it all again, borrowing some sealant from Special Racing Projects and replacing the wadding in the silencer.
It still didn't sound quite right but it was time to put up with it and get on with the testing.
By the end Thomas was down in the 39s and James wasn't, though he said he was happy enough with the way the kart was going.
7:30hrs on Saturday and the weather looked as good as before.
We left the bulk of the practice to Richard with Thomas going out for a few laps first and James snatching half a dozen laps before Richard qualified us in 10th in 39.631.
James started the race and was due to do a full hour before changing to Richard.
But he really wasn't going fast enough and dropped a few places to begin with, got lapped several times by teams he should have been overtaking, got belted off by Extreme Racing at the pits bend (they were very nice about it and apologised later), tried very hard with no obvious effect and came in after 58 minutes thoroughly dispirited and unreasonably tired.
The changeover to Richard went fine with no delay and he seemed to be doing better. However on his 38th lap just after the right-left-right combination after the start/finish there was a noise like the exhaust dropping off and the engine died.
He coasted to the hairpin, hoping to restart it, but it wouldn't turn over so he had to wait for high speed rescue to turn up in shape of James and Thomas with the trolley who soon got the ensemble back to the pits.
We discovered the engine was locked solid and one look at the mound of fragmented and then solidified aluminium on the spark plug showed that the piston must be pretty much wrecked.
George Robinson now arrived with the cavalry, supplying us with one of his spare engines. What we had to do now was to get the engine on and working and be moving when the flag came down, so that we could collect three finisher's points. We would also have to re-fuel twice before the end.
We got the engine on and working and sent Thomas out, but he was back within two laps to re-fuel and to report that the engine was missing under full throttle. We really didn't want to blow up one of George's engines so we changed the jetting and sent Thomas out again. He stopped once more for fuel and then in the remaining 18 laps of the race got our best time of 39.615 on lap 135.
We finished - not last! - in 15th.
The engine was still missing a bit, so we decided to take our carburettor off and use one of George's instead.
We also changed to a new set of slicks and got Thomas out to scrub them in and to qualify us in 39.507 in 12th
This time James lost fewer places at the start, having re-chipped his brain cells over lunch, and generally went a bit quicker getting down to 39.728 after 30 laps. Better, but still a few tenths off what was necessary.
The engine was still banging at full throttle so the only way to stop that was to use about three quarters of the pedal movement. Interestingly, it didn't seem to harm the performance much - certainly not as much as using full throttle and letting it bang!
A smooth changeover to Richard and he was down to 39.774 within four laps and got his best lap of 39.721 about half way though his session. He was also doing a useful amount of overtaking and seemed to be enjoying himself.
James had been out for 56 minutes and Richard stayed out for just over the hour so that we had a spare pit stop in hand in case the weather really worsened. It did in fact look as if it might rain and during Richard's drive it had become much more cloudy with the odd heavy spot. The pit lane was full of trolleys and tyres in the expectation of a downpour to come.
But for the moment it was still hot and dry as Thomas went out.
After only a few laps the rain started - not with a bang but with slowly steadily increasing dollops of water. The pits bend in particular very quickly became very very slippery and Thomas executed some of the slowest four wheel drifts we've ever seen. But he stayed on the track as others crashed - some even managed to spin on the main straight and as the rain increased about half the field came in for wets.
However, we had a good look at the weather and decided that there was a) enough heat in the track to dry it off pretty quickly once the rain stopped and that b) the rain wasn't going to last long.
So we left him out there......
In fact the pits bend was one of the worst places to be - on the new tarmac on the other side of the circuit there was still quite a lot of grip left and even at the worst of the weather Thomas was still quicker on slicks than others such as Moss were on wets.
As the rain stopped and the track dried, and Pit Management looked smug as all the teams on wets came in for a change to slicks, Thomas rapidly got back up to speed.
In fact the cooler, cleaner track now seemed to give some benefit as he got in some really good laps hitting our best of the day at 39.364 on lap 259.
Ten laps from the end and we were in 9th with a peeved Special Racing Projects who had lost out by changing to wets, in 10th place and catching up.
Three laps from the end and it looked as if Thomas might stay in front as long as he realised that he was racing for position.
Two laps from the end and SRP suddenly closed right up as the steering column came adrift on our kart! Thomas held it together - put it back together - but for the last lap he and Dave for SRP were nose to tail.
It was a little worrying for the Pit Team but at the chequered flag we were still just ahead - by .093 seconds.
Click for the full results and championship positions.
It was a good race and excellent fun.
James swears he'll learn the track before the next race here.......
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g