Lydd International; April 8th; Round 3 MSA British Endurance Kart Championship.
Final position: 6th in Clubmans Class; 22nd overall.
For the first time since our debut at Buckmore in February we had the whole team racing, Edward having arrived at a hiatus in his exam schedule. We also had Tim as Pit Wall Manager again, and we had taken the trouble to get up at an unsociably early hour to get to Lydd by 11.30hrs on Saturday morning for practice.
It wasn't raining, there was even a bit of sun, and the dampish track was drying rapidly in breezy conditions. The infield was still partially flooded, however, so EKC made the decision to run the race without this tight section, which made for a really good long back straight. Richard was the first to test the kart's off road abilities in the gravel trap at the end of this section.
So everything was looking good and to cap it all, Thomas had been given a microwave for his birthday which we set up in the back of James car and plugged into the generator. This powered it perfectly well, despite it grumbling that this wasn't the sort of task it had envisaged when it had joined a motor racing team.
Practice went well apart from a spot of bother with the brakes and a spinning Rotax which took out Edward and bent the back bumper right into the right hand rear tyre. Back bumpers are amazingly difficult to bend straight again but the combined efforts of the Think.com Team, Red Stripe Racing, a Mercedes and a Ford Galaxy had the desired effect.(Weeks later when we were rebuilding the kart we found that the back axle had been bent, only by a few mm, but enough to stop it running really freely).
Apart from that we played around with different settings until we were all pretty pleased with what we ended up with. Mind you, we were fairly happy with what we started the day with so who knows if we made any difference. But we learnt the track...or rather...yes, yes OK they get the message; let's get on with it.
Miraculously, although it had rained in the night, the track was dry at 08.00hrs on Sunday, and the sun came out, to make for some really good driving conditions.
As at Daytona, we qualified at 26th, so James, who was starting the race, was unable to drop any further down the grid. But he did manage to avoid a fair number of crashing karts on the first two chicanes.
Team orders on this race were to keep going at all costs and avoid any confrontation and James had obviously taken this to heart as he spent as much time waving people through with his right hand as he did steering with it. But he didn't crash and just managed to squeeze in a faster lap than Thomas' qualifying time, at 46.947.
Next out was Edward who settled down at once to decent times, especially considering this was only his second race in the kart. He managed to limit himself to only one visit to the gravel trap at the end of the back straight.
But the sun went out towards the end of his drive when the axle key holding on one of the drive sprockets fell out, leaving him to limp home on only one engine. Thanks to other teams we got a new key and fitted it but we must have lost 10 or 15 minutes - say 15 laps? - before we managed to get Richard out on his run. Its still a mystery what would make the key want to fall out in the first place, but its one more thing that will never happen again!
Again, Richard had signed up to the non-aggression treaty, and circulated smoothly and consistently quickly, though by this time the wind was increasing and outright speed directly into the half gale down the back straight was definitely reduced.
Thomas took over for the final hour and a half, looking very competitive against other karts, finally winning an hour long tussle with Javelin Racing and completely failing to test any of the gravel traps or run off areas. Management were becoming increasingly worried about the possibility of rain as the wind strengthened and the clouds rolled in. But barring disasters it was now apparent that we were stuck in 22nd again.
At the end, that's where we came, and although it was disappointing to be hit by mechanical problems again, we can all see considerable potential for improvement - and we are going to make that improvement - but above all we are going to go on enjoying the racing!
We've now got a long gap until the next round we can do, at Llandow in June, so we dumped both sets of engines on Justin Peren of Thruxton Engine Tuning, to give to Peter Inchley, so that he can tell us which engines are doing what, and what we can do about it.
Meanwhile, we need to do more testing and find another race to compete in during April or May.......
Have a look at the pictures! This page will take a minute or so to download, so go and make a cup of tea or extract another Red Stripe from the fridge while you're waiting. If it doesn't show all of all of the photos press F5 or your refresh button until either it does or you're fed up with the whole flaming business.
See the full results.