Bayford Meadows; Round 1 Southern Promax Championship April 3rd 2004
Finishing position: 15th
The day started more or less dry and looked as if it would stay that way though the forecast was a little bit equivocal.
We picked up some new control tyres and put them on ready for practice and all seemed fine until a very small crack in the chassis was noticed just at the point where the steering column meets the cross member. It was barely discernable and it wasn't going to prevent us racing, but it was obviously something we would have to get fixed before the next round. This was also going to be the last round for the engine before its annual rebuild.
Thomas went out first to scrub in the new tyres and then we changed over to old rubber and James went out to do some testing.
Once we had got the tyre pressures correct and balanced, the kart felt pretty good and there really didn't seem any reason to changes anything.
At the same time it started to rain - though not enough to warrant a change to intermediates - so further testing was a bit pointless.
But by the beginning of qualifying, the track had dried off again and James qualified reasonably well in 15th place in a time of 51.869s.
At the start with the engine picking up very cleanly for once, he made up several places down the inside on the first two corners but within the first lap he was in trouble.
In retrospect his problem was obviously a puncture in the right hand rear tyre but perhaps because we have virtually never had problems with punctures before it took him about five laps before he gave up the struggle and came into the pits.
Thomas had luckily already realised what had gone wrong and had a new wheel standing by and James was out again pretty quickly.
Handling was OK even with the odd tyre and on lap 20 James got our best lap on the race at 52.109s.
For most of his stint he was running in a bit of a vacuum, which at least kept him out of trouble. When he did come up against other karts he found himself hampered at times by the engine coughing at the end of the main straight
We were concerned about fuel consumption so Thomas brought him in dead on the hour. In fact we had plenty of fuel at each stop and the engine misfire was probably caused by running it too lean.
Thomas took over and had a largely uneventful drive suffering as James had with the occasional cough from the engine and in general finding that it felt a bit tired.
By the end of his drive rain was looking possible and James had put on full wet weather gear, but we couldn't afford to wait more than a few minutes beyond the hour in case we ran out of fuel.
James' drive started dry but fairly soon spots of rain started to appear. It didn't seem to be enough to affect the track too much, until suddenly about half the field came off the circuit at the bottom end of the track. Luckily James could see what was happening and slowed enough to stay on the track. But the rain was getting worse and Tom could see a whole raft of bad weather coming up over Sittingbourne so called James in for a change to intermediates.
A good tyre change and James was enjoying himself as he went past all the karts still on slicks. But it didn't last long as the rain refused to continue and then the track began to dry out.
Soon chunks of rubber were flying off the front tyre but we didn't want to stop again to change tyres and it might rain again, so James stayed out there, enjoying himself enormously as the kart would slide very predictably in the faster corners, but would bog down badly in the slower ones.
We would definitely have been quicker on the slicks - the quickest lap on the intermediates was only 54.7s
By the end of his drive the front left was just a slick, but otherwise seemed OK.
A good tyre change and final re-fuel and Thomas was out again . but almost immediately getting caught out by - was it Auto 1 Racing?? - who went straight on into the tyre wall on the inside of the left hander going on to the main straight. They pogoed out again in high speed reverse and all Thomas could do was to spin into them severely re-shaping his side pod. Luckily it was no worse than that and he was able to continue.
We were now very gradually moving up the field as Thomas' times came down into the consistent 52s
Progress was only slightly delayed by a racing incident with SZR in which we came off worst, but the universe was restored to its true order when Thomas overtook them again a few laps later.
And after that it was a relatively smooth drive to the finish.
Full results are here with Championship positions here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g