Buckmore Park; Round 2 Southern Promax Championship May 1st 2004
Finishing position: 12th
James had collected the rebuilt engine from Trevor at Trackside the afternoon before and Thomas had built up the repaired and repainted chassis as far as he could.
Nevertheless when we got the kart out of the trailer at 7.45am it looked at if we had a fair bit of work to do.
James concentrated on getting some new slicks and then putting them on the spare wheels while Tom fitted the engine, and in fact we more or less had the whole thing together by just after 9.00.
At this point any hope that we were going to have a dry day got washed out by a 40min downpour and although it had all but stopped by Drivers' Briefing, the track was awash.
We put on intermediates and Thomas went out to test the engine.
Trevor had done the main part of the running in for us already, but we were planning to be cautious in the half hour of practice.
James went out next but the plug immediately oiled up and wouldn't clear, the engine finally giving up in the corporate pits on the other side of the circuit.
By the time we had got it back and put in a new plug we had wasted ten minutes of useful practice time.
It was still running much too rich so we took the jet size down by 10 points and the engine then really flew.
We thought we just had time to change to new wets but by the time we got on the track practice had been stopped.
We would like to have tried a smaller main jet as well.
James had inadvertently qualified us in 19th although the layout of the dummy grid at Buckmore gives a distorted view and it felt like we were in mid-field.
James started well, making up a place or two in the first couple of laps, but after about five laps he was definitely dropping back as the track dried out.
Although the kart felt OK and he reckoned he was driving reasonably well, nothing he did seemed to make him go any faster. The engine was fine but was a little spluttery coming out of the slowest corners.
But he was keeping clear of trouble and Thomas kept him out there for 65mins in the hope that the track would be dry enough for slicks at changeover.
For the last two laps before he came in James had been following a slick shod kart which seemed to be going at about the same speed as the karts with wets on.
But it was very marginal and in a hurried exchange at the re-fuelling bay we decided to change to slicks and pray for dry weather.
We have had faster tyre changes and quicker re-fuelling times but we got Thomas out in the end and James retired to the back of the trailer to re-fill the petrol can. He didn't notice therefore that almost immediately it began to rain again. He also didn't notice Thomas coming into the pits so the beginning of the tyre change back again to intermediates, took longer than it should have.
Further delayed by a bearing coming out of one of the front wheels......
Once again, there was nothing wrong with Tom's driving and the kart handled OK, but it just wasn't as fast as everybody else. But Tom was now into a very consistent drive, with only one entertainment break when Auto One spun on the pits bend. Tom didn't have enough space or time to get round on the inside, but just managed to squeeze though on the outside, just clipping the back wheel of their kart but not doing any damage.
When things had settled down a bit we were left running strongly in 15th place, with our lap times coming down into the 47s as the track dried off and the intermediates got busy converting themselves to slicks.
James left him out there for as long as he dared, bringing him in with just 45mins to go.
We thought about changing to slicks but it was still heavily misted and it just wasn't worth the risk. But the rear left hand tyre was pretty much treadless by this stage, although the front left was holding up quite well which proved encouraging things about the handling.
As James' stint progressed the track continued to dry and most of the teams did their fastest laps in this period.
James got our fastest lap on lap 163 at 46.807 and for the first half of the session looked a bit more competitive, overtaking Dogz and Extreme Racing, though both teams got him back before the end of the race.
At the end we had got ourselves up to 12th place by one means or another - not a stunning result but not as bad as it could have been - and nice to have got away from 15th place at last.
This leaves us 9th equal in the Championship so we still have a good chance of a respectable placing there, come the Autumn - especially if Richard can be persuaded to come out of semi retirement and join James at the next round at Bayford. Otherwise we shall have to miss it.
Results are here and look at the Promax Championship site to read Alan Wood's report of the race.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g