Crail Summer Endurance - Round 3

On Sunday 22nd, I set off for Crail raceway expecting a very wet day – the forecast was for heavy rain all day, but once again they got it wrong! The circuit was wet when we got there but by the end of qualifying most were on slick tyres.

Today we were having a 30 minute practice and then a 30 minute qualifying so we decided to split the sessions between us. Practice went OK with both of us managing to be in the top 3 times, so I started the qualy session by chasing Grant from MBM. Unfortunately, Grant spun at the second hairpin and I had nowhere to go and the resulting contact bent one of the front track rods. By the time we got it changed and re-aligned, Ros only had time for 2 timed laps and we qualified 9th. Just before race 1 we had a brief shower and everyone started on wet tyres. Yet again on lap 1 I had to take to the grass to avoid a spinner, putting me back to roughly 18th, but the kart felt good and I managed to get back up to 4th by the change over. The track had been drying throughout the session and Ros continued, along with nearly everybody else, to get closer to ‘slick’ times, eventually finishing 5th. Not great, but starting from 9th it was OK.

For race 2, only 3 karts stayed on wets, and we weren’t one of them. With the reverse grid, I started 14th and made it to the front after 2 laps, and that’s where I stayed. When I handed over to Ros we had an 8 second lead and despite very light rain for most of the last 10 minutes, we took a comfortable win.

This put us 2nd on the grid for the final race of the day when the forecasted rain finally arrived in ernest, and I didn’t get a great start, ending up behind Apollo, MBM and Panther by the end of lap1. We had made a change to the kart for the final race and it became clear that it had worked as I picked off the guys in front and hit the front after 15 minutes. We changed over just before the 40 minute mark, and somehow lost our lead - Ros was fighting over second place with Eric of Apollo and it ended in tears for us with Eric pushing Ros off with 4 laps to go. This put us behind MBM and 4th it was. Eric and Ros had a good old ‘discussion’ after the race and Eric admitted deliberately hitting Ros, but hey, that’s racing :-)

We ended up second overall, and we managed to find a wet setup that works, so we were reasonably happy. The guys who challenged us for last year’s championship, Milwalk, yet again had really bad luck with a retirement from race 2 and it looks like they are now out of the championship hunt. We lead Apollo by 2 and MBM by 6, which considering that we feel we have not got the best out of the new kart yet, is very encouraging.