Crail Summer Endurance - Round 5

What a great day! Ros and I knew that with Grant away at the UK sprint championship, we would have chance to stretch our lead over MBM - However, Grant drafted in Chris (from Milwalk) to partner Alan Kirkcaldy and we knew it would be a tough day. However, during practice, I was 'on it' and I was 3 tenths clear of everybody else, except for the guys in the GX200. We all race in the GX160 class, but there is provision in the rules to allow us to race along side the lager engined GX200s, and one turned up today. It was pretty much the same in qualifying, with the GX200 beating my best by 0.03s and everybody else at least 3 tenths back.
The first race start was totally chaotic with karts everywhere, and they red flagged it. Someone had rear ended Michael who spun into me bending on of the front track rods. We managed an elegant fix - we hit it hard with a big hammer to straighten it and then went straight back to the grid. Once we got underway, I made a good break and sat behind the 200 eventually handing over to Ros with a 12 second lead. Ros had been seeing a chiropractor this week and although he said he was better, I wasn't so sure and he seemed to be struggling a bit for pace. However, he kept it together and won by just under a second from Fraser in the Panther Racing kart.


Race 2 was the usual reverse grid and again I got lucky, making my way to the lead in just over 2 laps. But, compared to practice, my times were about 3-5 tenths off, and I knew I was being caught - Michael, the other Panther driver, eventually caught and passed me just before the half hour, and I was bit surprised that he was gaining his time on me down the main straight. Ros took over and again struggled eventually finishing fourth.

We couldn't understand it, but with some help from Scott Brown (Apollo) we found that the spark plus on the left hand engine had a loose terminal (the little threaded thing at the top) and we got that fixed with a touch of Locktite.

So for race 3, I started second, to Michael, who I managed to pass into the roundabout on lap 1 and then I built a good lead of around 10 seconds. I was really pleased with this stint as I was pushing really hard and as a result I was putting in loads of fast, consistent laps. Ros took over, but again he was around 3 tenths of a second off of my pace, and slowly Fraser and Chris (driving for MBM!) pulled him in. They caught Ros with 5 laps to go and we were then treated to the best racing I've seen in a long time. They all had a spell in the lead and they were all on the limit, but Ros's fighting spirit saw us take our second win of the day, and the overall win by 1 point from Panther.

So a great day, and great preparation. Next weekend, Grant, Chris, Alan, Fraser and me travel down to Warden Law kart club near Sunderland to represent Scotland at the Internations challenge.