April 19, 2004

Pro Kart Endurance Champs April 2004

Sandown Park Round 2

Well I was thinking that things couldn't get worse for us until round 2 at Sandown Park came along!

All was going rather well for me this weekend! All rather relaxed actually. I decided to use the horse box this weekend as I have yet to buy a van for the kart team. So we loaded it all up and set of for practice on Saturday afternoon! Finally arrive at the circuit some 2.30 mins later to be told that practice was at 10am till 4pm (I thought it was 6pm till 10pm) and we had missed it. Suffice it to say that you could have cut the atmosphere in the truck on the way home with a knife :) So no practice for us, no set-up nada, niet, nothing . I decided we would still race as we NEED the practice and the kart needs time on the engines. The worst that can happen is that we will come last I said! (famous last words)

Race day

Race day came and I look out the window at home to see clouds, clouds and rain. The wets I had ordered had not arrived which left us with one set of intermediates. The slicks I had ordered had also not arrived which left us with one set of slicks. Here we go again. Off we set at 6.30am quite optimistic (mad fools). I am a glass half full type of guy I guess.

Qualifying

We arrive at the circuit and struggle to get our new awning up in the rain and wind. I get us all signed in and the kart is ready to go on our intermediate wets. So out we go for qualifying with me doing the whole stint and qualifying us in a very respectable second from LAST place! So its back of the grid for us AGAIN!! At this point we should have sought advice on kart set-up as we were experiencing massive understeer after the long straight which was quite scary :) Flat out down the main straight and the turn in and go straight on is not a good feeling I can tell you!

Race

Race on and its me who is out first. Half the field decide to opt for slicks at this point with frantic activity in the pits. We did our normal what shall we do, what shall we do headless chicken routine and decided to stay on wets (well intermediates) So race is away and its mad. I thought to myself I can do this and just went for it. In the first few laps there seemed to be quite a few snags, tangles and pile-ups and I ducked and dived and made up some places. Then it started to rain and I picked off all the slicks guys who had to pit as they were sliding all over the place. Woohoo I am in 7th place from the back of the grid. That felt good. Sadly it is raining harder and harder. My nice shiny wet suit is in the pits along with my overboots too! Why didn't I put them on I don't know :( In the kart I am now experiencing increasingly a lack of grip due to my very worn wets. We are dropping places hand over fist. I decide to pit and put Chris out while I try and source (borrow) some better wets.

So anyway I come in and Chris goes out whilst I run around the pits in search of a set of wets. I finally got some from JJ although again they were intermediates. So Chris back in, change tires and John out in very very heavy rain. By this time the kart is a nightmare to drive with major understeer. I have been told this is due to a lack of centripetal forces twisting the chassis and lifting the rear wheel! Although what centipedes have to do with my R2 I don't know. Next time I will give us a bit of castor and maybe some negative camber too! So much to learn. An hour to go and John comes in and the mobile chicane goes out (Adam)! I think the less said about that hours drive the better :)

Suffice it to say Adam crashed no less than 9 times :) he managed to break 3 wheels and totally wrote of the kart of team number 11 (sorry guys) We did finish however (again) and we did get some points. I think we would have done so much better if I had been on new wets at the start, and we had had some spare new wets in the pits. Perhaps I could have held a top ten place, who knows. Still the fact that I got us to 7th place shows me that we can do much better. I still think we need another gear as we only hit 5000 rpm max at the end of the straight on 20/72 gearing but thats another issue I guess!

Roll on round 3..

Mark...

Posted by Mark at April 19, 2004 1:44 PM

Comments

Post a comment