Crail Summer Endurance - Round 6

Some would say Ros and I have had some good luck in this year's championship, so on Sunday we redressed the balance and had our worst race day ever.

It all started so well, with a practice time of 43.97 on the long circuit, the first time we've ever been sub 44 seconds and a full 2 tenths quicker than last months record.

Then in qualifying we managed a 37.44 on the short circuit to put us 3rd on the grid for race 1.

I did all of race 1 having a great battle with Scott in the Apollo kart for most of it. We finished 4th and things looked OK.

However, before race 2 we discovered that the rear axle had about 5mm of lateral play and this was causing the brake to bind. We fixed it as best as we could, but Ros was heavily punted on the 5th lap of the race by someone who hadn't raced in Prokarts this year and when he came in we could see that in addition to the damaged nose cone sustained in the shunt, the axle was still moving.

With the help of Eric (happy now?) from Apollo, we identified a worn woodruf key as the culprit and fashioned a new one from some spare key that Eric had. By this time race 2 was over so we decided Ros should again start race 3.

He made a great start, but I could see that he was struggling to run at our normal pace. He came in saying that the kart felt very strange, so I went out for 20 or so laps and I couldn't go quicker than 37.9 and that was only one lap, whereas in qualifying, I was doing consistent 37.5/6.

So in the 3 heats we finished 4th, last and did not finish the last race.

We don't know what's wrong, and Ros plans to strip it down to see if he can find the issue. We're wondering if the heavy shunt has bent something.......


RANT MODE ON

For the past 2 years we have enjoyed some incredibly close ProKart racing at Crail with many instances of heats being won by tenths after an hour of racing (5 different winners this year) However, this weekend there appeared on the grid, a pair of new "Missiles", which cost the owner big bucks. Needless to say, the team in question (who have one of the best ProKart drivers in the UK), won all three races by a country mile, but who really wins?

One of two things will happen: 1. Everybody else will go down the route of paying the big bucks for new engines, and we'll be right back where we started, or 2. People will decide they can't compete with cheque book racing and stop altogether. The builder wins in scenario 1 and nobody wins in 2.


RANT MODE OFF


I'm now looking forward to the Monaco Kart cup in 2 weeks time. It can't be any worse :-)