Buckmore Park August 14th 2005
Round 12 Stiddard Trackside GP Premier Series
The track was dry as the team met up at the circuit at 07:50hrs. The forecast was for dry weather again although there was quite a lot of cloud around. It seemed to us there was a strong possibility of the odd sharp shower.
Both drivers reported that their ribs were 100% OK and James had done a lot of work to get the lead seat insert to work better.
James went out first and did four laps to get the tyres warm. He came back in, reporting that the kart felt good - and even comfortable - and seemed competitive with the other teams out there.
Thomas took over for testing and we got the best results by stiffening up the rear of the chassis.
Thomas qualified 11th in a time of 42.764 and was happy with the way the chassis and engine were performing.
James started the race reasonably well being classified 9th until Special Racing Projects came past.
Although the leading pack were gradually going away from him, he was doing OK getting down to 42.17 on lap 12.
However by about lap 30 he was beginning to realise that either his rib protector had moved or something else had changed because he was getting severely banged in the back of the ribs again.
His times dropped off by about two seconds and Zero Racing among others came past. He knew he had to pit but also knew that we couldn't refuel within the first half hour of the race, so he had to stay out till then.
In the event he cut it slightly finer than he meant to and arrived at the fuel bay just 54 seconds over the 30 minutes.
The problem, James discovered, was that the lead insert had slipped down creating a very uncomfortable seat - if that hadn't happened he might have been OK. But we shall never know......
So now, plan B was for Thomas to do an hour to get us back onto schedule, while James tried to get back into racing form again.
Thomas was going well and after only three laps got our best lap of 41.74 on lap 48 as we were lying 12th.
Later on the track seemed to get quicker and we would probably have improved on that time.
By lap 77 we had regained our ninth spot but now Thomas was in trouble as his lap times climbed.
By lap 82 he had had enough and he came in suffering from exactly the same rib problem as James.
And that was the end of our race for the day. The full results are here and Neil Ashcroft's impartial report is also worth reading.
The good part was how well the kart itself performed; the bad part was that we are still left with a serious rib problem. We think a visit to Tillet may be the next thing to try.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g