Llandow; June 24th; Round 6 MSA British Endurance Kart Championship.
Final position: 5th in Clubmans Class; 19th overall.
One thing you can say, which you can't very often say about Wales, is that the weather was brilliant. Good sunshine and a cooling breeze coming off the sea. That's how it was on Saturday afternoon when we arrived for practice, and how it stayed for the rest of the weekend.
We got to the track for Saturday practice in good time since James' house is only ten minutes away and Richard and Tom had driven over from Cambridge that morning. The track itself has been recently re-surfaced and extended with quite a good new covered pits area and plenty of space elsewhere.
Practice started well with Tom and Richard leading the reduction of lap times downwards with James hopping along afterwards and we made a few modifications to the set up including wider rear rims to lower the gearing and give us some more oomph coming out of the two hairpins.
However half way through the session one of the engines died suddenly and when we took off the rocker box we found that a bit of exhaust baffle had got lodged under the exhaust valve so popping the push rod off the rocker. Luckily no damage was done, but it resolved the argument about whether it was worth getting Ted Poole to take the baffles out and reseal the exhausts. We gave all four of them to him after the race.........
On Sunday, we qualified in our normal position and Thomas started the race for us looking comfortably competitive against other karts and moving steadily up the field, until we were intermittently 2nd or 3rd in the Clubman's Class. He was also achieving our best lap times.
Richard continued the good work and it did seem possible that we might hold onto to third place.
James went out next but somehow couldn't get it all together. Whether it was that the setup of the kart didn't suit him, or that he was still not fully fit (or that he's just a lousy.............yes thank you, thank you......that'll do, if you don't mind) but the net effect was that we dropped two places over the final two hours to finish out of the points.
It was disappointing in a way, but on the other hand it is encouraging that we are getting nearer the competitive standard of other teams.
Now we have to concentrate on getting everything prepared for the Le Mans 24hrs and we have a day's testing booked at PF International on Thursday to get Edward and our reserve driver, Mark Crankshaw, up to speed.
The full results are here.