And the Winners are.....

Ros and I endured a horrible day at Crail for the final round of the Endurance Championship. The weather forecast had predicted warm sunny conditions for the week end, but they couldn't have been more wrong. How they expect us to listen to their 'computer modeled' prophecies of doom and gloom about global warming are beyond me - they can't even get it right for 3-4 days ahead! Anyway, it was pouring when we got to the circuit and it pretty much stayed that way for the whole day.

I did the first 20 mins practice and although there was very little grip, I managed to be 4th quickest. Ros then started the qualifying session but came in after 10 minutes as he thought he was way off the pace - In reality, he was about 6th, but we decided to fit our new wet tyres and send him back out. However, the session had been shortened to 20 minutes and by the time we got him back on circuit, the session was over and we qualified 9th, our worst of the season.

Race 1 was pretty wild at the start, but I managed to stay out of trouble and pick off a couple of folk. We had decided that if I was going well, we wouldn't change over drivers at the mandatory pit stop, and that's what happened. Eric in the Apollo kart was easily the quickest on the track, but I was up to 3rd and catching Mark of XLB in 2nd. But I pushed too hard and had a slight off at the roundabout, losing around 8 seconds. I kept pushing and by the flag was only a second behind him. 3rd was a good result, as Milwalk were 4th and the championship was ours. I also got the fastest lap of the race, which was a big surprise!

For race 2, Ros we decided Ros would do the whole hour. Race 2 is a reverse grid, so Ros again started 9th (18 karts yesterday), but with the slower drivers ahead quickly made his way to second. Eventually, the quick folk worked their way forward and the racing became pretty good, in worsening conditions. With only 2 laps left the 1st and 3rd placed karts fell victim to the weather giving us a lucky 2nd place, again behind Apollo.

I stated race 3 from 3rd place - The officials admitted post race that I should have been 2nd, but it didn't seem to matter on the grid - but just past the start, Jack in the XLB kart had a major slide and knocked me off - Jack should have been 3rd, but started 2nd :-). Even worse was to follow with kart 30 spinning on the entry to the roundabout on lap 2 and I had nowhere to go. The collision wasn't too bad and I managed to get back on track, albeit in last place. Over the next 30 mins, I worked my way back up to 5th, where I came up behind young Dom, who was having his first weekend at Crail. Twice I got along side him only for him to move over - the first time I went off in avoidance, and the second time we touched, but he still didn't see me! The kart wasn't handling properly and when I came in to hand over to Ros the reason was evident - In my second lap collision, the right hand track rod had been bent - Ros quickly straightened it as much as he could and went back out - We were in 5th place and that's how it ended, with Ros finding the kart a real handful - Within 10 minutes of the end of the race the left rear tyre was flat, so at least we knew why! Apollo again won race 3 - After Whilton, Eric and Scott bought some extended front hubs, which were used by the winning Dutch team in the UK 24 hour. They certainly seemed to work well yesterday! I think we'll have to get a set......


Overall, we finished 2nd on the day and won the championship by over 30 points from Apollo with Milwalk in 3rd. Not bad for our first season at Crail.

Too Good? Could Be....

On Tuesday night 2 F'Sport teams took part in a indoor charity endurance race in aid of Childline at ScotKart in Cambuslang. I started karting there in 2003 and have always found it to be a fun place to race. Our 2 teams started from the back of the grid and finished first and second - Craig, Noel, Kenny, Kenny and Steve beat Me , Dom, Neil, Euan and Ian by just over a lap and deserved their win. After the race the podium announcement was interrupted by some guy saying that the whole event was a fix and that our teams had been cheating! Amazingly, he got a lot of vocal support, and when someone tried to point out that we were raising money for charity, he started shouting and swearing. I'd thought no more about it 'till I got a call from Ian, the following morning, saying that F'Sport were no longer welcome at Scotkart - The management had decided that due to complaints from most other teams, he had no choice, on commercial grounds, but to ask us not to return. The first time I've ever heard of a team being banned for being too good. We got no black flags, unlike many of the other teams, whose driving was simply appalling. We didn't set the fastest lap, that was done by the Vodaphone team, but we did all wear our F'Sport race suits and looked professional - obviously a crime:-( Neil Dom & I are due to join up with Neil's brother, Fraser to defend our champion of champions title in a couple of weeks at ScotKart as Team ITW - will we be allowed to race? What a bizarre decision.

On the plus side, I've got a busy few weeks coming up. Firstly I've got a bit of fun on Sunday with my first race in a while at Raceland in the endurance championship - I'm hoping for rain to make it interesting. Then it's down to the serious stuff the following weekend with the final round of the summer endurance series at Crail. We're leading the field by 15 points going into the final round, so we've still got work to do.

It gets better; I've been asked to race in the Monaco Kart GP over the weekend of Oct 21/22nd - This event usually attracts a few current and past F1 drivers! Don't know much more at the moment, but more details to follow.


And just to top things off, I've been offered a drive in a Radical SR4 at Spa in Belgium over the 6th-8th of October in the Radical World Cup - I'm currently trying to find the three thousand pounds plus that I'll need to compete - Again more details to follow.

The ABkC Internations Meeting

Was held at the Llandow circuit just south of Cardiff. After a long journey from Glasgow, via Edinburgh to pick up Ros's kart, I arrived at the circuit early on Thursday morning. This was to allow me to lean the track and get used to driving on Dunlop SL1 tyres - Ros had 2 partly worn sets from 3 years ago, but as the alternative was spending £100 on a new set, I took the old ones. At Crail, we run Duro tyres, which are very hard in comparison to the Dunlops, so I expected the kart to feel different.

Grant, was also there on Thursday, and I couldn't get within 2.5 seconds of his time as the kart just understeered everywhere. More worrying was the fact that even on the tyres that he won the O plate on, at Rowrah last weekend, he was way off the pace of the front running Team England guys. It has to be said that the English team was made up of the guys from the Bayliss Boys endurance team, and as we saw at Whilton a few weeks ago, in a straight line their karts just pull away from you. It's like they've got extra horse power.

For the last practice session on Thursday, Grant gave me a set of year old tyres from his van, and immediately I found over 1.5 seconds and once we were issued with our race tyres on Friday morning, things improved some more, but I only had 2 test sessions left so didn't get to the root of the understeer problem and I still had to find around 4/10ths. Looking back, spending the extra £100 on another set of tyres would have been the right way to go, but hindsight is like that :-)

The weather forecast predicted a wet Saturday, and it looked like they were going to be right for a change, as we arrived at a sodden circuit. This was good for us, as a wet track negates any engine advantage. I managed 7th overall with Grant, Mark, Andy, Neil and Chris very close behind - Eamon and Lauren were just a little behind. With Wales taking 5 of the top 6 with one English interloper, things looked promising. However, by the end of qualifying, the track was drying quickly so I, along with Chris and Neil, took a gamble on slicks for our first heat - By the end of the race we were quicker than the guys on wets, but even so, 2 corners, that had been recently re-surfaced, were still pretty slippy, and we got swampped through them - As a taste of things to come, I had a kart hit me off the track bending the left track rod.

Heat 2 was competely dry and Grant managed a 6th with Andy 9th and me 10th. However after the race, I got called to the clerk of the course who told me I was being penalised for taking out one of the Welsh team. I had made a mistake at the second chicane and the guy had passed me down the back straight - I followed him through the hairpin and chicane 1 where he errored - I went to the inside approaching the tight left and when he saw me he moved over and pushed me onto the grass (wet) - I could do nothing and when we arrived at the corner, he turned in and spun off across my nose. I was pretty angry at being penalised for his stupidity, but it turns out that anyone who had any sort of contact with a local driver, was penalised.

In heat 3 I made sure I kept out of trouble and finished 12th. Then it rained some more, so I started from 3rd and was maintaing that position when on lap 2, through the quick right hander, an English guy hit my right hand side so hard, he knocked me off the circuit and popped the front tyre off of the wheel - this meant 0 psi of pressure and immediate retirement. Grant saw the whole thing from 6th and reckoned if the guy hadn't hit me, he'd have hit the tyre wall. This idiotic manouvre cost him time so Grant got a run on him out of the last chicane - he tried to push Grant onto the grass as he overtook, but Grant was ready for it and the English guy hit the tyres. Chris Miller, of Milwalk, had told me that it would get rough, but this was unbelieveable. Normally, I don't drink but I managed a couple of pints on Saturday night - man, was I fumming.


Sunday dawned wet, but with a strong wind and some sun, the track soon dried. The pre-final sets the grid positions for the final - I started 11th and was making progress when I got mullered, at the same corner by another of the English lot and again the front right deflated - I'm guessing that the sidewall had been damaged in Saturday's collision - There was nothing visible, but the hit was nowhere near as hard, so it's ether that or really bad luck. So for the final I started way back and just managed to avoid a major pile up at the tight left. This left me behind Neil, who seemed to be having kart problems - He let me pass and I set abpout chasing 3 Welsh guys. With about 5 laps to go, one of them slowed (turns out he lost an engine) but as I dived to the inside of the tight left, he moved over - mindfull of the previous penalty, I backed off and got him on the way to the fast right. This had allowed Mark to close right up, so I let him through to see if he could pull me up to the back of the other 2 Welsh guys. We got closer, but ran out of laps, finishing Grant in 11th, Mark 14th and me 15th. Andy had started 3rd and got passed by one of the Welsh - Andy is one of the best ProKart drivers in the whole of Britain, and he got down the inside at the hairpin, where the Welsh guy turned in on him - Andy got a black flag! Crazy!

I have to say it wasn't much fun for 2 reasons - the driving standards were shockingly bad and the marsahlling was pretty xenophobic. Secondly, I found out that I need to spend more money if I want to compete at this level. I figured out this morning that the reason the kart was understeering was that it had too much rear grip - *if* i'd have spent another £100 on a set of new slicks, I hope I'd have managed to figure this out through testing on Thursday/Friday. But if this is all I learned, it's still of value.

Would I do it again - absolutely!

The Team
Grant Murray
Neil Dodson
Andy Smith
Chris Lipscombe
Eamon Keiller
Lauren Keiller
Mark Lawrence
David Joseph