Crail - Summer Endurance 2

After last month's clean sweep, we expected a much tougher day at Crail - It was a nice sunny day and with 24 karts on the grid and we had an hour of practice, instead of the usual 30 minutes. We started on our old tyres from last month and the kart felt really good to both Ros and me, with us posting the 2nd fastest lap on the short circuit. The second 30 mins of practice was to be on the long circuit - we missed the first 5 minutes or so as we changed over to our new tyres, but immediately, I thought the kart felt 'wrong' - The left rear felt like it was folding over when turning right - I put this down to the pressures being wrong and continued my 15 minutes - When we changed over for Ros to do the last 15 mins, we adjusted the tyre pressures, but it didn't make any difference - we qualified 4th. We thought about going back to the old tyres but decided to persevere with the new set and adjusted the pressures some more. At the start I maintained 4th but was losing touch with the top 3 every lap and it wasn't long before Jack, in the new XLB Anderson kart, came past me. We swapped places a couple of times after that , but I handed over to Ros in 5th place. Ros drove a great stint, aided but some poor pitwork from MBM, to get us back up to 3rd by the flag, but way down on our championship rivals, Milwalk. So for race 2, we changed the rear tyres to last months, as we discovered that the new left rear tyre was on back to front (race tyres are directional - it was on the wrong way). I started 3rd from the back on the reverse grid from race 2, and got punted into the gravel of pit bend on lap 1. This seemed to wake me up, and I later found out I was consistently the fastest driver on the track as I made my way up to 3rd. We were about 4 seconds down on Milwalk/MBM at the change over - But again Ros was straight on the pace and we won the race by 15 seconds. At least we knew what the problem had been. For race 3 we started, along side Milwalk, on the front row with MBM and Apollo on row 2. The start was clean and I managed to get into the lead, albeit for only 2 corners , before making a mistake that allowed MBM and Milwalk through. I eventually got past Grant in the MBM kart but Chris from Milwalk was pulling away by 2-4 tenths a lap. I eventually managed to almost match his pace, but not consistently enough and at the half hour change over, Milwalk had a 13 second lead. Ros chased for all he was worth, but at the flag, we were still 7 seconds behind. The rear tyres were pretty shot by the end and the kart was getting quite oversteery, so second overall is not a bad result, but we've decided that we need to do some testing to find an extra 10th or two from our setup. If we manage that, we'll be in good shape for the rest of the year.

Craig continued his karting education with a 6th overall, partnered by Michael (who races at Raceland with us) - I think we may well have another "Crail Convert".