Sandown Park; July 22nd; Round 7 MSA British Endurance Kart Championship.
Final position: 5th in Clubmans Class; 20th overall.
We (Tom, Richard and James, on this occasion, as Edward was living it up down in Newquay) had an early start in Cambridge on Saturday morning finishing off the work Tom and Richard had done on the kart since Le Mans. Then off down the M11 and the inevitable traffic jam on the M25 which made us about half an hour late for the start of practice and too late to get into the overfull paddock. So we set our pits up in an adjacent field and got Richard out on the track.
Despite overnight rain the weather was good with a bit of wind and some good sunshine, and the track temperatures were rising well.
This time we really wanted to get to grips with the tyre pressures and so started with them much higher than normal and gradually took them down in stages of 15 minutes driving time, to find the optimum level.
The lap times came down encouragingly as we made alterations and we had just about hit the optimum as James took over the testing. One more reduction of pressure on the front bought the lap time down to 47.3 seconds and when Tom took over it became apparent we were changing things for the worse.
But we had run out of time now, so concentrated on doing some more work on the kart (we found there was a very slight bend in the back axle on the left side) and on moving our pits into the paddock proper, setting ourselves up next to the highly entertaining and helpful SZR Team.
So for the race day on Sunday we went back to the set up we had found for James and bunged him out to qualify for us. However, he could only manage a 47.5 on a cold track and we established ourselves in our usual position on the grid.
The best thing you can say about our starts when James is responsible, is that they are safe....................so, we won't say any more about that, then......except that no one would have been surprised if he had felt a little lonely out there.......................until he got lapped, of course...........
The race had started dry, but almost immediately it started to spit with rain and it continued to do this to a greater or lesser extent throughout the first two hours. Indeed at about the first hour mark for a short period it became significantly wet, which caught out a number of teams and after 90 minutes we were up to 16th place. As James' session ended and the track began to dry properly, he i) got punted off on the right hander coming onto the pits straight and ii) four laps later got his best lap of 47.19. Another two laps and he handed over to Thomas after 143 laps.
The pit crew made an excellent driver change and re-fuel taking 1:51.24 for the out lap.
Thomas now made good use of the improved weather - for a time it got really quite hot - and lapped consistently in the 47s achieving our fastest lap of the race at 47.13 on lap 178.
But he was driving without instrumentation, as the Alfano had stopped working during the first hour of the first session, so he could only judge his performance against other karts and not on lap times. To the pit crew it looked as if we were circulating pretty quickly and after dropping to 19th at the pit stop we were on our way up the board again.
At 15:00hrs on the dot and after 149 more laps we brought Thomas in and Richard took over. The out lap this time had lasted 1:56.07
The track was cooling off again now and looking at the sky, it seemed pretty certain that we were going to get rain again at some point. But would it be within the next two hours?
But suddenly that wasn't our main concern as Richard signalled that he was coming in. We stopped him in the dead area after the weighbridge and managed to establish that the back axle was bent - on the right hand side, this time. There was nothing we could do about it apart from give up, and we weren't about to do that in a hurry, so the pit crew told Richard to get on with it.
The out lap had taken only 1:39.89 but we realised too late that we should have re-fuelled him at the same time. As it was he would still have to come in once more for the third mandatory fuel stop.
Despite the pounding Richard was getting from the axle he was doing some good times and for a long stretch was circulating at a barely polite distance either in front of or behind Fujinon Marden until they finally got separated in traffic.
The rain was holding off, and we delayed the final fuel stop until 16:50 (Sue Poole kindly came to our pit at 16:45 to remind us that we were one fuel stop short) in case we had to change tyres as well. In the event, although it spat with rain from time to time, it stayed largely dry and with 437 laps completed we finished 20th.
Richard was obviously only just getting into his stride, as his very last lap was one of his fastest, despite the horrible bouncing the back axle was giving him. Seeing straight was not a menu option as far as he was concerned, for quite a few minutes after he stopped.
Good points: encouraging that we are learning enough about the kart and our driving to be able to test and understand the effects of different set ups; that we were circulating for long periods on a par with other teams; that none of us scored an own goal in the crash stakes and that Tom didn't crash at all; that there was a very good reason why Ariston's second team went away from us like a dragster on nitro down the main straight; that James has stopped winging about feeling sick whenever he drives the kart (his brain replacement therapy is continuing); that this was one of our most enjoyable races. Bad points: that we didn't take advantage of the bent back axle stop to re fuel; that all the good points weren't reflected in a better result.
Full results are available here and there are some photographs if you click here.