Thomas was away in France for this race, so Richard brought the trailer up from Cambridge and met James for the ritual Indian in Sittingbourne the night before.

The weather forecast was good and when we arrived at 07:45 on Saturday morning we already had bright sun - it was obviously going to be a hot day.

Thomas had prepared the whole kart before departing, so set up was quick, the only blip coming when we tried to start the engine, only to find that the battery was flat. A swap to the spare cured that problem.

In testing we concentrated on a narrow range of tyre pressures, going down from our normal setting until we thought we had found the optimum. Then we went back to the beginning to verify the result and settled on pressures just a little below what we started with.

The kart was handling well and we had been aiming in testing to get below our fastest ever time at Bayford. By the time qualifying started, both of us had got below our best qualifying time by about half a second and then finally Richard got a lap of 51.498 to beat our best ever lap.

We felt pretty pleased with this, although it was still only good for 12th on a very tightly packed grid.

We had agreed previously that whoever got the fastest lap should start so it was Richard who drove first, staying nicely out of trouble for the first few laps but dropping a few places and then getting seriously blocked by Modelworld with Zero Racing becoming increasingly impatient behind.

Twice Richard got past only to have Modelworld push heavily past him again. Richard decided to let Zero have a go at the sharp end, so let them past, but after a couple of laps it became apparent that they weren't going to get past either.

Finally Richard took back Zero and got past Modelwoprld once and for all when they slid wide on the grass.

Released from this delay Richard was now after Voodoo whom he caught after about ten laps setting our fastest lap of the race at 51.214 on lap 25 in the process. But they were pretty equal and the chances of getting past didn't look good.

At that point the leaders overtook at the end of the main straight and Richard grabbed the chance of super gluing himself to RSM's back bumper . As RSM took Voodoo on the inside of the next corner, Richard had no choice but to follow through and Voodoo had no choice but to let him.

We were now on lap 41 and beginning to look good in 12th position and fifteen laps later as teams began to pit for fuel we had moved past Screevyn 86, ZLR and Reeves Brothers and were in 9th.

At just over the hour on lap 70 we had a clean clear refuel and driver change to James.

This dropped us down to 10th but the kart was feeling good and very controllable on all the corners and the tyres were holding up well in the hot conditions. James was driving OK and the only place he was still losing out, was onto the short midfield straight.

We were soon up to 9th and then 8th at the half hour point with James getting his fastest lap of 51.347 on lap 114.

By the end of his stint we had got up to 7th with Special Racing Projects right in front.

We took 2 seconds off our previous pit stop time and dropped two places to 9th and then started to move back up the grid again. By lap 170 we had dropped Misfits, Screevyn 86 and Reeves Brothers and were sitting in 6th with Auto One ahead of us. Lap times were holding up well in the mid 51s.

The changeover to James was a bit longer this time and dropped us down to 8th but once again, although he was firmly in the 52s we were moving back up again to 6th behind Auto I.

On lap 239 however, the race went pear shaped as James started throwing up and both Screevyn 86 and Reeves Brothers went past. James would have continued on but failed to make intelligent eye contact with the The Clerk of the Course who then black flagged him for driving like a zombie.

Richard - for some unknown reason - declined the offer of a further drive in the besplattered kart so James went out again to try to regain something from the mess.

But there wasn't a lot he could do in between further bouts of sickness and we were stuck in 12th until the race end in 20 or so laps.

Disappointing.................................But anyway, here are the results, Alan Wood's report and the Championship positions.