Bayford Park; Round 6 Promax Winter Series March 13th 2004
Finishing position: 15th
The forecast was good, with mild temperatures, no rain and even the possibility of a bit of sun.
Certainly the track was 99% dry when we arrived so we put on new slicks and sent Thomas out to wear them in followed by James for a few laps. The kart felt pretty good, and Richard then used up most of the remaining time testing different tyre pressures and finally qualifying us 12th in a time of 52.839.
We had also richened the carburation a little in an attempt to forestall an intermittent misfire half way down the main straight.
Thomas ended the session with a few more laps since he was going to start the race.
The start went reasonably well with Thomas dropping only one place to SZR when the engine oiled up as the start flag was waved.
He then found himself at the head of a line of about four karts with Zero right behind him and Special Racing Projects lurking at the back.
Zero managed to find a way past after a couple of laps but Tom wasn't about to give up. A few minutes later saw him sneak past at the end of the Start-Finish straight only to lose the place again on the exit to the pits bend.
On the next lap he tried again, this time protecting his position at the exit and staying in front.
With clear track ahead of him Thomas increased his speed drawing well away from the following crocodile, lapping Heracles 111 who must have crashed earlier on and catching Juice in the SZR kart.
On lap 17 he got our best lap of the race at 52.627.
Soon after that he was caught by the leaders - Titan and Allied 1.
Titan swept past at the end of the Start-Finish straight in their usual well controlled manner, but Allied, in an excess of enthusiasm over judgement tried to squeeze past on the grass at the right hander before the first hairpin.
Thomas had no idea they were there and kept his normal line with the result that Allied rammed into the side of our kart, the front left hand wheel bouncing up onto our engine and radiator.
Both karts spun off and although they re-started very quickly Thomas realised that he must have lost all the radiator coolant over his back wheel, as he spun on the next corner. Again he got going quickly but very soon thought better of risking an engine seizure and stopped just before the left hander into the carousel.
He was rescued, by the marshals, to the corporate pits at the other end of the circuit where he was met by the pit team with the the trolley and we got him back to the pits in record time.
Amazingly the time sheets showed it took us just 7 minutes from the moment he first crashed for us to collect the kart, get it back to the pits, re-connect and re-fill the radiator and get him out on the track again. It felt like double that and more!
Meanwhile Both ZLK in 3rd place and SZR had spun on the radiator coolant Thomas had deposited on the track - it only takes the smallest amount of water at Bayford for the track to become incredibly slippery, and the antifreeze additive probably doesn't help.
Thomas was now out again and going well and we decided to leave him out for well over the hour to give us a bit of a cushion with the fuel consumption over the other two sessions and to ensure that there was no congestion at the fuelling bay.
Most teams were having some difficulty stretching their fuel to last an hour. Titan managed to run out at dead on the hour at the most distant part of the circuit on the lap they were meant to be coming in for fuel.
With the time we had spent off track we had no problems with fuel and kept Thomas out while a black cloud decided it wasn't going to rain and passed on over us.
A smooth stop and change to Richard, who was quickly on the pace getting his lap times to a whisker of what Thomas had achieved at 52.678 on lap 90.
The weather however was not performing according to plan. A good wind was now blowing bringing with it some highly localised showers. The difficult thing was deciding whether they would hit us or pass us each time. So far we had escaped but then our self appointed weather expert became convinced we were in for a downpour.
As the rain started to fall we brought Richard back in for a change to intermediates and we had just completed the change when the rain stopped...
...so we decided to go back to slicks.
Only in retrospect can we now see that we should have stuck with the intermediates. The track was very treacherous with only a small amount of water and Richard reckoned he only had about five really dry laps before the rain started again.
At their best the lap times never came down below 55.5s again.
Thomas now had to leave because of other commitments and James was wary of making the same apparent mistake again of bringing Richard in too early.
However, with about 70mins of the race to go, Richard decided that he had had enough of the Torvill & Dean act and signalled that he was coming in.
A good tyre change was spoilt by a queue for the fuel bay followed by some slow work by the fuel marshals and then James was out on an ever wetter track.
He circulated safely without being dramatically fast or slow but at least he managed to stay on the track. Despite it being well over an hour's session we had no worries about fuel since we were going so much slower in the wet.
As the flag fell we were classified in 15th position, behind Zero Racing who had manfully battled on with slicks throughout the rain.
It would have been nice to have got a good result to keep us in the top ten in the Championship and to end Richard's involvement as a full time driver in the team. But never mind - all things considered we were happy with the way the kart had gone and Thomas and James are looking forward to the start of the 2004 Summer Championship in April.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g