Whilton Mill March 12th 2006
Round 1 Open Endurance Summer Series
The first round of the Summer series and the forecast was for overnight snow on the Saturday. Despite this the track was dry but cold when we turned up on Sunday morning.
Nothing major to be done on the kart (i.e. Thomas had already done it all) so we were ready for the start of practice.
It was the first time we had used the Kartline slick tyres, so we were interested to see how they behaved. Given the cold weather, we had them pumped up quite high and they felt good. First Thomas went out and we spent some time changing tyre pressures and then James finished the session with some adjustment of the bars.
He also qualified 5th on the grid in 41.52, but at the end the tyres showed signs of peeling, so we dropped the pressures down a bit for the race.
As Thomas moved off from the dummy grid, Simon Blease arrived to help us in the pits, and was able to see a good start for us as Thomas moved up to fourth ahead of TT Sport.
For the next few laps the front five karts remained in close formation as we battled with TT Sport, but eventually Thomas took the pragmatic view that there was 4.5 hours more racing to do and that he could afford to let the others go away.
After a few laps all the handicaps were applied and we dropped right down to 15th on the lap board and so began the long, long climb back up through the ranks of Prokarts, Thunder Karts and whatever else.
In the process, having overtaken one of them at Crook, he went slightly off line at the next right hander up the hill and got nudged in the rear for his efforts. This sent him into a near 360 degree spin onto the grass on the inside of the track, luckily without any damage. But the Rotax disliked this sort of centrifuging treatment and registered it's disapproval by refusing to re-start immediately - Simon and James were half way down the pit lane with the trolley before they saw Thomas move off again. Less than 30 seconds lost but it must have felt like an age to Thomas.
Despite this he got our best lap of the race on lap 34 with a time of 41.30. That compares with our previous best time at Whilton of 39.91 - all be it on a much warmer day and using the Maxxis tyres.
By lap 80 we had risen five places to 10th and were nearing the end of our fuel. But to do only three stops we had to run for at least 65 minutes per session. So after 65.235mins Simon signalled Thomas to come in and we completed a decent re-fuel and changeover to James.
The stop had dropped us down a couple of places, but James got going reasonably quickly, getting his fastest lap in 7 laps with a 41.59 - a bit off his qualifying time, although with more worn tyres.
The other limiting factor was that the engine was now refusing to pick-up properly in the mid range. This made driving down the hill tricky and also the turns leading up to the pits bend. In fact they were worse - as you came onto the throttle again after the left hander at the end of the back straight the engine would just die on you.
But in general things were going according to plan and by lap 135 or so we were up to 8th.
At this moment James got a bit too enthusiastic, pressing on with an overtaking manoeuvre on the outside of the start finish straight which resulted in him being pushed off onto the grass. At that speed on grass you might just as well be on ice and all he could do was keep the kart straight and pray he would miss the tyre wall at Crook. He might have just scrapped it, but anyway got past and managed to re-join the track at the uphill right hander. He was lucky to get away with it - it only added about seven seconds to his lap time - but it served to underline the fact that there's no point in pushing your luck against the slower karts when you can overtake them comparatively easily on the straights.
However, apart from that we were doing well and by lap 180 when the pit crew were thinking about bringing James in for more fuel, we had got up to 3rd, before James again avoided disaster by the skin of his teeth. He had just overtaken Boyes Lane at the top of the track when the misfire from the engine coming down the hill seemed even worse than usual and he realised as he turned left onto the back straight that he no more fuel left despite having driven for two or three minutes less than Thomas.
Boyes Lane swept past again of course, as James waved frantically at the pit and stuttered his way to the top of the pit lane, at which point the engine gave out and he pushed onto the weigh bridge.
The rest of the re-fuel and changeover went well apart from James falling flat on his face as he slipped on spilt petrol as he pushed Thomas away from the fuel bay.
We were now in 8th place and moving steadily and consistently up again, despite the continuing engine misfire.
James retired to the VW for a rest leaving Simon pinned to the pit wall.
The problem now was that we had to get back onto schedule with the fuel stops - we had to stretch Thomas' fuel even more than his first session, otherwise we would have to refuel twice in James' last session.
So we kept him out there for an additional three laps - a whopping six more than James had done - which meant that however much of a soak James turned out to be, we should get through to the end.
No excuse for not going as fast as possible - were Simon's final words to James as he drove off after a reasonable pit stop, slowed only by being held for a long time on the weighbridge. With no fuel, I guess were were pretty much on the limit.
We had briefly hit 2nd before the pit stop and James reckoned that he had to overtake Boyes Lane twice more to get back ahead of them. He knew he couldn't do anything about The Litigator, who were not only going faster but were several laps ahead so he could ignore them.
He duly overtook Boyes Lane twice and in fact was within half a lap or less of overtaking them again when on lap 334 we had a fairly major equipment failure. Not going to go into details for one reason or another but it affected driver comfort, braking and steering, and threatened to become catastrophic if James drove too fast! At the same time James himself was tiring and the engine was still misfiring.
His lap times rose significantly but he judged that if he could just keep in front of Boyes Lane we should get a podium. Better still The Litigator had been penalised 10 laps for coming in underweight so at this moment we were ahead of them.
In fact we would have been 1st if James had not miscalculated the number of times he had to overtake Boyes Lane. Just to compound the error, two laps from the end they un-lapped themselves. James still had the speed to get past them again and was on their back bumper ready to overtake going up the hill when the chequered flag came out. He had somehow missed the last lap board and the clock on the kart was a minute slow (which he knew about but had forgotten).
The Litigator had also got back ahead of us so we got 3rd overall and 2nd in Rotax. A great result except one is just left wondering that if James had realised what the true position was, whether he could have gone just that bit faster - he denies this of course, but then he would, wouldn't he!
Great to have Simon Blease there to help us once again - many thanks to him for all his help and support.
The results are here and there are photographs by Gary Chandler here.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g