Bayford Meadows; Round 3 Winter Promax Championship December 3rd 2004
5th Place.
Improbably the forecast said dry with sunny spells, but at 08:00hrs it was damp, not very cold and heavily overcast. The day before Thomas had been afraid he would be delayed by fog, but there seemed no danger of that today. The one thing that did delay him was a crash on the motorway which closed the M25 around Brentwood. It looked at if he was in good company as James found only one other team at the track when he got there.
Thomas arrived a bit before nine and we had more or less got things together by the start of practice - we just had to put new tyres on the spare wheels. Thomas got on with that while James went out to get some laps in.
The track was pretty slippery but he was following Misfits round without too much drama or difficulty when they slid wide and spun on the infield hairpin. James went for the inside and all would have been well if Misfits hadn't slid back out onto the track again. The back wheel of our kart just clipped the front of theirs - no more than a tap - but it bent our super fragile hollow axle.
Back to the pits and Thomas started to fit £75 worth of new axle purchased in a hurry from Trackside Karting, while James took over the business of changing the tyres.
We got it done - just - with about five minutes of qualifying left. James went out again and on his last lap, before the chequered flag ended the session, managed to do a respectable 52.439. This qualified us in 8th place which we were pretty happy with all things considered.
Thomas started the race having done no practice at all, so took a cautious view and stayed out of trouble. Momentarily we were last, but then he started to work his way back and then past the opposition.
First Dogz, and then after a few more laps Zero and Midas succumbed while Auto 1 took an early pit stop. With Zero and Midas he developed an interesting overtaking manoeuvre which involved going past at the end of the main straight, being re-overtaken at the exit to the pits bend and then overtaking again on the inside just after the next right hander before the hairpin - seemed to work rather well...although he got a warning for it on one of the occasions.
This got us up to 7th place by lap 15 with no one much within shouting distance in front and no obvious danger from behind, so Thomas just got on with it in isolation getting a highly creditable 51.950 on lap 18 - our best in this race and not far off the leader's times.
By lap 39 we had improved to 6th as PDQ came to grief and then 5th a few laps later as Misfits - who had been doing really well - came in for a stop.
We had planned to stop at the hour to refuel but not to change drivers until the following stop in another 30mins, when we wouldn't take on fuel. But at 50mins Thomas became concerned about the amount of petrol he had left and came in early for a re-fill.
The pit stop went well but it did mean that we would now have to re-fuel at the next stop as well.
The pause had allowed Midas and Auto 1 though and we were back in 7th again chasing Midas. Thomas was just about to get within overtaking distance when Misfits came past on a charge dropping us back to 8th but it wasn't long before he got past Midas and up to 7th and then 6th as Auto 1 took a break.
Misfits pitted to allow us into 5th on lap 84 and then we came in for more fuel and a change to James on lap 104 dropping only one place to Auto 1 in the process.
James wasn't finding the kart too easy to drive and was way off Thomas's best times but he was holding 6th OK driving in a bit of dead space with no one to race against. That is until, in their enthusiasm, Auto 1 misjudged their braking on the infield hairpin and walloped James into a spin leaving him facing three rapidly approaching karts including the race leader Titan. It should have been an extremely unpleasant experience, but somehow we escaped without damage and got going again fairly quickly - although by this time Auto 1 were well away.
The position improved as SRP ran out of petrol for the second time and K1 had a long stop as a result of the earlier pile-up, and we were up to 4th and then 3rd as Auto 1 pitted.
SRP came back through in a hurry but our pit stop a few laps later lost us no places at all and we retained 4th.
James was beginning to get a bit more out of the kart and was getting better lap times in his second session, finally getting down to his earlier qualifying time.
But it wasn't enough to stop Auto 1 coming past again to demote us to 5th.
And that's how it stayed to the end with some interest being provided by James' attempts to lap Misfits (success) and Midas (half a kart's length short at the chequered flag).
Considering the late start, the bent axle and the lack of set up time - which in retrospect we can see ended in a set up that we wouldn't have chosen - we got a pretty good result. And we're pretty confident that we can get it going faster next time. So we're encouraged. Click for results and here is Alan Wood's report.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g