Whilton Mill August 6th 2006
Round 6 Open Endurance Summer Series
The Autumn weather we had during the preceding week disappeared on Friday, and Saturday was pretty hot. We were hoping for cloud on Sunday but in the event it was not only close but with the sun in strong evidence, very hot as well, with temperatures touching the 30°s. But not as bad as the last round.
George Robinson had supplied us with a new 12.5mm carburettor and had also cleaned our 8.5mm one with an ultrasonic bath.
So in practice we started with the old one to see if it would now work properly.
And it did! Which is nice in a way since we now have two good carburettors to use. Its also a good recommendation for the ultrasonic cleaning system.
We then switched to the new one which also worked well and James got on with the testing.
TT Sport was going quickly as usual and the two Billand teams - one of then driven by Jason Jones from Special Racing Projects - were both faster than us, but we qualified 4th in the end in an unconfirmed time of 40.70s. Also nice to see that Jason out qualified the Billand A Team.
With the tank completely full, Thomas started the race and settled down to a reasonably comfortable 5th place as TT Sport disappeared off into the distance and the two Billand teams started their own private race in 2nd and 3rd with Kartsmart in 4th.
Thomas had had to defend his position from Box Tech early on but they had dropped back and been overtaken by Le Maverick who were now looking a bit dangerous for us.
Meanwhile Jason Redding driving the Red Max kart who had started from the back of the grid and then lost a lap due to last minute alterations and forgetting to put on the lead weights were on a charge and caught up with us.
They went round with us for a couple of laps before Thomas decided to wave them through but at that moment they weren't in striking distance. Thomas waited for them and when they came past Le Maverick was stuck on their rear bumper.
Jason went off into the distance leaving a frustrated Thomas trying to get back past the opportunistic opposition.
As we discovered in July, Le Maverick can drive very wide, but eventually Thomas regained his place and moved on and away.
By this time all the handicaps had been applied and we were in 10th place but moving up the field - helped in part by JSJ's drive in the Billand ending early with no brakes and a blown engine.
By lap 45 or so we had got up to 7th and by the time Thomas did his fastest time at 40.95 on lap 85 we were up to 6th and things were looking reasonably good for us.
On 68 minutes James signalled for the 1st pit stop
On 68.3 minutes Thomas ran out of petrol at the bottom of the hill. The engine stuttered its way to the top and Thomas then steered off the course to get out of the way and make for the pit entrance.
The engine finally failed in the middle of the grass and James arrived shortly afterwards to help push to the fuel bay.
Another full tank of petrol and James was out on the track having lost about 4 minutes.
The kart felt really good and the engine sounded strong and was pulling well out of the slower corners with the larger carburettor.
The Billand super stars came past at the end of the hill going quite a bit quicker on top speed if nothing else, but apart from that we seemed to be going on average as quickly as anyone else.
The lengthy pit stop had dropped us right down to 11th and although James quite quickly got back into 10th it took him another 50 laps or so to make up the next place to 9th.
At least he seemed to have brushed up on his overtaking since the July round, and he was hardly held up at all - even by Le Maverick.
On lap 141 he got our fastest lap of the day just shading Thomas' time at 40.860s
As James approached the end of his session with five minutes to go, he could see that he still had what looked like a decent amount of fuel left, but 3 or 4 laps later it had gone and he signalled that he was coming in without waiting for the signal from the pit.
30 seconds later at the bottom of the hill he ran out of petrol.
As before he just got to the top of it and then fizzled and freewheeled down through the esses and half way down the back straight before getting out and pushing across the grass.
Thomas arrived to help complete a carbon copy repeat performance of the first pit stop. We were five seconds quicker this time...........
So now we were back in a rather unnecessarily familiar 10th place.
Thomas was going very well, driving less than three tenths off his average speed for his first session and not putting a wheel wrong for the whole of his second drive and by lap 260 we had regained 7th position.
Meanwhile James was calculating the minimum time he could keep him out there in order not to run out of fuel in the final session.
This time after 64 minutes he signalled for the fuel stop and this time the fuel lasted for the whole of the remaining lap.
The sigh of relief changed to a groan as we realised, as James re-started the engine, that the chain had come off. Very luckily - and skilfully - Thomas was able to wind it back on again but as James once again re-started the engine it was obvious that the clutch had broken and was locked on.
Well, as long as it stayed locked and James kept going, that wasn't going to be much of a problem.
James had a run of bad laps about a third of the way through his session, but then seemed to get his act together to get some respectable lap times once again.
We were fairly quickly up to 7th but it was not until we got right to the end that we got 6th from Box Tech as they hit a problem.
This gave us 2nd Rotax behind the very unlucky Red Max Racing who were on target for an overall win before their sprocket stripped only five minutes before the end of the race.
It was an exhausting race but we were pleased with the way the kart had gone and with our lap times. Now we need to re-calibrate our ideas about fuel consumption and find a way of making the petrol last longer.
Here are the full results and have a look at some of Gary Chandler's photographs.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g