Whilton Mill December 3rd 2006
Round 1 OEKC Adrian Midgely Winter Cup
The forecast the night before had been for strong winds and violent showers for the Sunday and the track was certainly wet when we arrived but on the other hand the forecast was improving hour by hour so there was a fair amount of guesswork involved.
Thomas had cleaned out the carburettor that had caused us problems in practice at the last race and after an argument with the weighing scales which we simply had to ignore we got underway with testing.
This time the engine was going perfectly and the kart handling pretty much OK, on a wet but drying track.
James went out with the front ride height increased slightly and after a few laps was under the impression that he had gone faster with that set up than with the old one.
Unfortunately it wasn't until he had qualified in an undistinguished 9th and we were about to join the dummy grid that he checked the lap times from the log and found that he had in fact gone two tenths slower.
Still, there was no time to change it again so we had to live with it.
Despite a conservative start Thomas was immediately up into 8th position which converted to 10th once all the handicaps were applied. He was driving safely and steadily trying to conserve the tyres on the drying track.
We had started with very low tyre pressures to take advantage of the conditions so we weren't so competitive for the first 45 minutes. However as the track dried so we got faster in comparison with everybody else and towards the end of his session he was in the top three for lap times.
But, most importantly, he had an untroubled drive, apart from a brush with TT Racing who missed his breaking point or the throttle stuck, and just wiped his nose cone off on Thomas' back bumper. But no harm to us...
Re-fuelling went well but then we made the second mistake of the day. The track was now dry enough for slicks with TT Racing the first to change about 15mins earlier. Most teams were changing to slicks at the hour point, but James reckoned that the approaching clouds would deluge the track within the next five minutes.
So we remained on wets. James was almost as fast as TT Racing but at the expense of severe wear on the wets which were now shredding themselves into oblivion. And the rain didn't arrive. And the sun came out.
We were going to have come in again to change to slicks anyway, but then James probably clipped the middle curb in the downhill esses and that was enough to throw off the chain. Luckily that's not a very long push back to the pits and we quickly swapped tyres - despite not being able to use the nut gun due to an ailing battery - and got the chain back on.
Back out on the track and James was struggling to get used to the brand new slicks when the spare battery came off and started rolling around the floor tray. A nylock nut had failed, but James was able to drive back to the pits to get a new one put on.
His next stint was even shorter as the rear wheel went for a run by itself at the top of the track. James spun off harmlessly and then spent some time hunting for the errant wheel. By the time he had found it and dragged the kart though a gate in the perimeter fence, Thomas was on hand with the trolley.
We decided we could now make best use of the day by testing some different set ups and James went out again to use up the rest of his fuel for the next twenty minutes.
By the end of that time he was going well and running fourth fastest with some more speed to come.
The new re-fuelling jug worked well and we reset the chassis back to our standard set up to form the basis of further testing.
However our times dropped off a bit which we found strange so Thomas went out again on the same set up to make sure.
That session included a short spin as he went onto a damp patch to get past TT Racing but the times were still down on what we expected.
He came in to make some changes but almost immediately it started to rain - just enough to make any comparative testing or chassis setup meaningless.
So we decided to call it a day and pack up early. The results are here and some of Gary Chandler's photographs here.
A disappointing day, with the sort of conditions we normally do well in. Roll on January and a new start in 2007.
R e d S t r i p e R a c i n g