Bayford Meadows; August 12th; Round 8 MSA British Endurance Kart Championship.
Final position: 3rd in Clubmans Class; 14th overall.
Saturday practice started at 10.00hrs and went on to 16.00hrs so we thought we would have masses of time to try every set-up we wanted. Of course it didn't work out like that - there's never enough time - but the weather was good with good sun and quite a lot of wind.
We played around with the tyre pressures until we thought we had them about right and then stiffened up the chassis, all of us meanwhile learning the circuit and getting into the low 55s.
The only hiccup was a broken throttle cable which suddenly wore out - in fact they both did; must have been the new pedal.
Camping was on the side of the circuit itself once the corporate karts had stopped for the evening and the only snag was that we had forgotten the gas for the stove. Many thanks to HTH for allowing us to use their stove for tea and coffee on race day. Otherwise the barbecue worked well.
It rained overnight but on Sunday morning the track was dry.
Thomas had got the best time in testing so he was to qualify and start the race. We put on new tyres for his session, which he then scrubbed in and managed a really good qualifying lap of 54.7 - it was enough to raise us off the back row at least.
As the teams formed up on the dummy grid, it began to spit with rain and the race was declared open for tyre choice. No one changed to wets at this stage but as the race started the rain got worse and after ten laps we pulled Tom in for a tyre change. Of course, with hindsight we should have done it sooner.........
It was a bungled changeover, with the pit crew forgetting about the weights and pins but we got James out in full wet weather gear in 4:24.5 .
Even with wets, it was very slippery on the racing line where there was a build up of rubber, and James progressed fairly conservatively until the the track started to dry. We have found the Wright handles really well at a certain point on a drying track, and so it was now with James suddenly able to catch and pass other karts - an entirely new experience for him.
After 62 laps James had hit a best of 58.05 and it was obvious we could now do better on slicks. This time the change-over went faultlessly in 3:12.5 and Tom took over, reducing lap times steadily down to 56.02.
It was at this point that team HTH who had been very gradually catching up over a number of laps came through on the inside towards the end of the main straight and instead of waiting until he was past, simply moved over on Tom when he was still alongside. Contact ensued and Tom had no choice but to take the escape route up the pit lane in a cloud of blue smoke. By the time he had got over the weighbridge and rejoined the circuit, HTH was a good half lap in front and in process of being shown a warning flag by the Clerk of the Course for bad driving.
On lap 177 Thomas got our best lap of the race during a tussle with Ariston and CSF of 55.230 and fifteen laps later came in to hand over to Richard with an out lap of 2:01.1
Richard carried on at about the same speed getting his best lap of 55.6 towards the end of his session, but always looking very competitive against other teams and quite often, beating them.
We had been hovering around 3rd or 4th in the Clubmans for some time and had made 2nd at one point, and now we began to wonder if we could maintain 3rd till the end. Cobra ASM were just behind us, but we still had one more stop to do at which point they would definitely go past.
James took over on lap 316, the changeover taking 1:54.7, with about 45mins to go. As predicted Cobra ASM had gone past us once in the pits and now passed us again on the track - James being unable to match their speed. But he was going reasonably well getting down to 55.8 and having a prolonged race with SZR, who eventually got away in traffic.
So at the end we knew we had got 4th but had only lost out by a small margin and were pleased by our progress. Then we heard that HTH who was the leading Clubman, had been excluded for refusing to allow his engines to be checked and that promoted us to 3rd.
We deserved it! In this situation you can only make the assumption that HTH's engines were not standard and that that had helped him to go past us. Winning is about more than just going fast....
Full results can be seen here. Once again James forgot his camera, so no pictures but there is one of us taken by Paula Hamilton and included in the Karting Magazine report of the race. Click here.
The next race was to have been the PFI 500 mile meeting. This was going to attract double points but on protest from other teams, it was put back to normal scoring again. And then the whole race was cancelled due to lack of entries. A great pity from an entirely selfish point of view, as double points would have suited us rather well, James had arranged to fly back from Spain early and we were keen to consolidate our success.