Buckmore Park; Round 4 Promax Winter Series January 24th 2004
Finishing position: 2nd
As James arrived late at the circuit (unselfishly giving Richard and Thomas the pleasure of being first for a change) the circuit was still very wet from overnight rain.
But it looked as if it would dry up with even some sun showing through and not much evidence of rain bearing clouds.
We had originally assumed we would go straight out in practice on slicks but by 10:00hrs and the start of the practice session the track was still running with water and throwing up spray so it was a reasonable set of intermediates we went out on.
Thomas went out to test the engine and once he was happy it was going well - after a complete carburettor re-build after the Bayford fiasco - James took over for some testing and then Richard qualified us in 19th position.
The kart was going OK, but nothing stunning and we were obviously going to have to find a way of getting a bit more speed out of it.
The final tweak was to take a couple of degrees off the castor and then it was time for James to go for the start.
He made up quite a few places in the first couple of laps without getting involved in any banging and was just beginning to settle down in 15th when he touched the brakes too hard on the entrance to the infield hairpin and did a quick spin on the spot.
Luckily all the following karts avoided him and he set off after the pack again, in absolute last position.
A short period under full course yellows let him catch everyone else up, but then he lost them all when the race re-started and the engine oiled up.
Progress up the grid was slow and he got into an extended battle with HWB Racing which ended in a racing incident at the beginning of the downhill section - James came off worst but only lost 4 or 5 seconds.
Then he got involved in a tussle with Eyestorm which lasted for most of the rest of the session.
By lap 70 he was up to a true 10th but the pit crew were keeping him out for as long as they could in order to delay the change to slicks until the track had dried more.
As a result by the time he came in after 75 laps and just over 64 minutes we were credited with 4th.
There was no delay in re-fuelling and we did one of our best wheel changes to get Richard going again with an outlap of 3:31.06.
Once the track timing had sorted itself out - having briefly credited us with 2nd - we were back in 10th just over half way up the field and Richard was soon lapping faster on the slicks than James had been on the wets.
There was now a dry line round about 90% of the track but it was only a kart's width, and to go outside it to overtake someone else was asking for trouble.
Nevertheless by the middle of his session Richard's lap times were down by about 5 seconds into the 45s and he was having an extremely competitive time driving always in a pack of about eight karts all of whom were swapping position continually.
On lap 132 he got his best lap of the day at 45.40 seconds.
Having been hovering around 10th and 11th for the first half of his session, in the second half he moved up through 9th to 8th and finally when he came in on lap 145 he had got us up to 7th.
Another smooth changeover in 1:55.33 with no wait for fuel and Thomas was out, with some fairly serious clouds beginning to show up.
We got another set of intermediates set up on the dummy grid just in case the weather decided to toss us a googly.
After a couple of laps on full yellows again, Thomas was up to 6th place and going well, achieving our fastest lap of the race on lap 167 at 45.347 seconds - that's an average speed for that lap of 95.3km/h.
That was immediately followed by another set of very slow laps under full yellows and a few laps after that we were in 5th.
Then Eyestorm went off or pitted - we assumed because his tyres had given out since he was still running on wets, but apparently not since he came back on with the same tyres. Anyway, that gave us 4th on lap 191.
Titan were well in front by a couple of laps, but not looking very happy. Then it looked as if their battery had come disconnected which delayed them with an on track repair and we were only half a lap behind with only about 10 mins to go.
Meanwhile the seat in our kart had come loose and the engine was missing at the end of the straight so Thomas had backed off a little not realising that he was doing so well and assuming that he was still back in 6th somewhere.
But with six laps to go he caught and passed Titan and set off after Dogz - another team still running on wets which were inevitably well past their use-by date.
It didn't seem possible that Tom could catch them but Dogz really were in trouble and on the penultimate lap he swept past to get second.
This was a brilliant result in a decent sized grid (very good to see SZR back racing in Promax and doing such a tasteful 360 degree spin on the approach to the pits bend) and a prefect antidote to the two very disappointing rounds at Bayford. We may miss the next one in February but we're all looking forward to finally beating the Bayford jinx in March.
Full results are here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g