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