Bayford Meadows; Round 4 Winter Promax Championship January 8th 2005
5th Place - again.
Simon Blease joined as as support for this round. Haven't seen him since we did the Bol d'Or in 1983, so it was good to see him again and to have his help.
Someone must have realised that we had an unused set of wets we were dying to use, because once again the rain stopped in time for the track to more or less dry off before practice started. With a brisk wind, temperatures around 10 degrees and some sunshine it was really quite pleasant.
James had obviously been eating too much over Christmas and had to spend some time hacking lead from the seat insert to get the weight down and to make sure he could fit in the seat while wearing his new rib protector.
It was all finished by 10:00hrs and we got out on the track at once and then stuck rigorously to the 4 lap test routine to find the best set up. We made quite a few changes and although we could have done with another couple of hours, we ended up with a kart that felt pretty good.
Thomas went out to qualify and got into 5th position with a time of 42.021.
At the start Thomas lost, gained and lost a place in quick succession to Titan II, and then to SRP, but stayed well in touch with them only very gradually falling back from the leading pack. Behind him Auto 1 were well back and no danger, and for the majority of the rest of his stint he was driving pretty much alone in 7th place.
On lap 47 he got our fastest lap of the race at 51.902
5 laps later and Simon brought him in for fuel and a driver change to James.
We were running a safe strategy, refuelling three times and dividing driving into 45 minute sessions, but we knew we would loose time in the pits as a result compared to those teams risking a two fuel stop strategy.
The pit stop was slow and we had difficulty attaching the lead seat insert, so we need to do some work on that before the next race.
This had dropped us well down the order to 10th but as others stopped for fuel we climbed back up the board and by lap 71 we were back up to 7th. Auto 1, going for the two fuel stops and having eked out their 7.5lts of fuel for over 64 minutes had done a lightening pit stop and jumped ahead of us.
James was gradually catching them however while at the same time Auto 1 were coming up to lap Midas. That then began to develop into a slightly bad tempered affair as Auto 1 attempted to pass Midas, who obviously felt that their rightful place was in front.
Coming onto the start finish straight, James got a good run, for once, nipped through on the outside of Auto 1 and then on the inside of Midas on the pits bend, holding his line and just preventing Midas from coming back up the inside. After a lap or so K1 Racing came past which gave James something to hang onto and get a tow away from the squabble behind him.
This put us back to 6th again with Titan 2 comfortably in front, and James pitted again on lap 100 for a better changeover than before to Thomas, dropping only one place to Auto 1 again.
The kart showed absolutely no sign of deteriorating handling and Thomas' average times for this drive were almost identical to his first drive.
Auto 1 did two rapid stops in quick succession and only lost their place to us on their second and last stop.
Meanwhile Thomas was having a real battle with RSM whom he managed to overtake twice only to be re-overtaken after the pits bend. On the third time he managed to keep RSM back and after that moved away but it had been an epic battle - without any banging or shoving.
We were in 5th place now, with SRP not having been able to get their 7.5lts to last more than 56 minutes and as a result ran out of petrol on the infield losing them several laps and dumping them down to 10th.
On lap 154 Thomas pitted for the final time inevitably losing our place to Auto 1 again despite it being our quickest pit stop of the race.
Soon after, RSM dropped out with a major engine failure and we were up to 5th again with Auto 1 half a lap in front and James making little impression on their lead. This was in spite of going on average slightly faster in this stint than his first one and in fact he got his fastest lap of the race on lap 172 at 52.017.
SRP came past trying to unlap themselves but James hung on, lost them, and then came back at them and overtook them again a few laps before the finish.
At the end we were 5th which was enough to give us 5th in the Championship just two points behind K1 who had had their best race of the season to come 2nd.
And that is scheduled to be our last Promax race. Its been a really good class to enter and we've enjoyed almost every minute of it. After we had finished clearing up we went round to see Peter at Trackside and signed up for The GP Premier Championship for which we will buy a full Rotax Max.
Many thanks to Simon for turning out to help and support.
The results are here and Alan Wood's final report is here. And here are the final Championship positions.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g