Bayford Meadows; Round 2 Winter Promax Championship November 6th 2004
12th Place.
The background to this race was selling the 7Kart more or less immediately after the last round at Ellough and then picking up the replacement Gillard from Colin Thorp on Monday evening with just four clear days to go before the race. Fortunately Colin had done a superb job of fitting the Promax to the chassis, fitting a new seat and setting it all up for us, while Thomas spent all his spare time finishing it off and James collected loads of lead in different forms and devised with Thomas via email the best ways of fitting it to the kart.
So we turned up at the the circuit with an untried kart, an hour and a half in which to make a new lead seat insert and to fix all the other lead, and half an hour's practice in which to get the whole thing going.
Fortunately the lead fitted beautifully and the weather was dry and mild, if overcast, and we were only a few seconds late in getting out for practice.
It was immediately apparent that this was a much more lively dynamic chassis - a real racing chassis which would turn in when you wanted it to and would respond instantly to any input you made. It was wonderful! Now all we had to do was to learn to drive it.
Thomas was out first followed by James. No startling times yet and there was little point in making many adjustments with only half an hour to play with; it was more important just to drive it. But we did try taking off two of the seat stays and then made a last minute increase in tyre pressures which seemed to have a beneficial effect.
James qualified in 12th, driving cautiously.
At the start he was still in full caution mode and made no progress, getting stuck in a crocodile with Misfits in front and Extreme and Dogz right behind. Auto 1 Racing stopped very early and then came through from behind dropping us down from 8th, and gradually pulled away.
James got past Misfits a couple of times but it was only on the third attempt that he made it stick and by that time everyone else had disappeared into the distance.
Especially Zero Racing who had qualified really well third on the grid and then managed to lap us before the end of the hour.
Gradually James was getting used to the chassis and on lap 42 got our fastest lap of the race at 51.526 - still about half a second off our best time at Bayford, but there's still a lot more to come from the chassis.
At just on 60 minutes as we were lying sixth, Thomas brought him in for fuel and driver change. The outlap was 113 seconds - a very good time and showing that the work on the weights was paying off.
That dropped us down to 8th again with Auto 1 in front.
Thomas was out now and although he just failed to match James' fastest lap, was much more consistent getting very nearly our best ever average per lap time for the whole session.
The idea was to do two short stints in the middle without refuelling in the middle, so after 35 minutes he came in to swap to James and with no re-fuelling we were out again in 80 seconds dropping only one place to RSM.
It was looking increasingly like rain so Thomas used the time to buy a set of front wheels for the Gillard and to get a set of wets ready.
This time it was James who was unable to match Thomas's times, but was getting gradually quicker throughout the session ending in 7th place and although Auto 1 Racing came through again, James stuck with them this time and was challenging to take the place back again when the fuel ran out.
Ironically this was the lap Thomas was due to bring him in on, but he was just half a lap short of fuel.
This means that we had got less than an hour from the tank-full we had taken on after James' first session which either means that the engine was suddenly using more fuel than usual, or that we had less than 7.5lts capacity in the fuel tank, or, most probably, that we didn't get a full tank when we re-fuelled.
Anyway, that dropped us down to 10th and we decided to turn Thomas's last session into an opportunity for testing some set up variations. Lower pressures, wider at the back and finally softer at the back.
Although no longer racing for position Thomas was definitely now going better than before in comparison to other teams, finding it much easier to hang on to them or to overtake.
With all the stopping we came last, not unexpectedly, although I think this is the first time ever.
We are very pleased with the chassis and feel confident that there is a great deal of potential for going faster, still to come. The only thing it doesn't like doing is going over kerbs - which is fair enough since it goes round the corner better anyway.
Here are the full results, Championship positions and Alan's version of the race.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g