When I stated out in motorsport in 2000, I had a list of places I wanted to race. These include Spa, Monaco, Monza, Silverstone and Le Mans. I've managed to do most and on the weekend of 4-6th of July, I added Le Mans to the 'done' list, but not the car circuit:-(
A few months ago I saw a post on the UK karting site in which a team was looking for drivers for the annual 24 hour Prokart race at the Alain Prost circuit in Le mans - I replied right away and eventually, I was in!
Friday was an early start with the flight to CDG Paris due to leave at 06:10 - I should have figured that a delay here would be a portent of issues to come but the pilot assured us we'd only be 10 mins late into Paris, and he was right. However, some twonk had left a bag in the customs area and the they shut it completely for 45 minutes, while they blew the offending item into 1000 pieces. In the current climate, understandable, but it meant I missed my train:-( So I eventually got to the circuit at 16:20 and it was straight out for 10 laps or so to try and learn the circuit. Right away the kart felt very lose at he rear and when I returned to the pits, I asked for the rear to be narrowed. The kart's owner, Chris Bancroft siad that the kart had felt much better on the previous days, and a mid 57 second lap was what it could do. Even after having the rear of the kart narrowed, I could only manage a 58.4 - only 2 laps though, so I put it down to not knowing the circuit yet.
I had a good nights sleep and got back to the circuit for the drivers briefing at 08:30. The weather had turned nasty and the circuit was pretty wet, allthough the organisers didn't decalre it a wet practice, so everyone was on slicks! It was pretty slippy and Chris was
running around 1:18s. So then it was into qualifying and I managed to get us 15th with a 1:12 as the rain stopped.
The race order was to be Chris, followed by Chris Prior, me, Spiros Christoforo and Ashley Bablee.
The 2 Chris's did their stints which were mostly dry with a 40 minute wet spell for Chris B. The kart felt much the same as it had on friday, but with more laps I was able to get down to 58.00 (the on-board timer gave me this time on 3 seperate laps!) and it was comfortable running 58.3-5s. We were getting hammered on the straights where we just didn't have the pace of the front running guys.
Latter, while watching Spiros and Ashley, you could see that about half way down the back straight we seemed to stop accelerating and the front runners would take 4-5 kart lengths out of us at that point! I had also found that I couldn't brake as late as a I wanted without a nasty grinding/mechanical rattle coming from the rear, which I thought was a failing clutch. Still, I could drive round it and it was a fairly un-eventful session. I was a bit concerned that I couldn't get into the 57's as the kart had been doing that sort of time in Chris B's hands earlier in the week, but I put it down to 'the noise'. I told the team about 'the noise' but as we thought as the pace was reasonable, we'd continue, in 12th place.
Spiros took over, but his lap times varied from high 58's to low 61's, and at the change over, he said 'the noise' was getting worse, and it was affecting the pace. Ashley fared no better with low 59's to high 61's!
About 10 minutes before Chris B was due to take over from Ashley for his second stint, we decided to get the kart onto the stand during the changeover to see if we could figure out if it was a failing clutch. It quickly becam aparent what the problem was, the rear axle's centre bearing had come competely loose from it's mounting and it was free to move as it liked. That took us around 15 mins to fix and dropped us back to 21st.
We changed the order slightly with Chris B, Chris P, Spiros (with a new set of tyres), Me and Ashley making up the next rota.
Chris B ran consistent low 59's, which kinda pointed to the fact that fixing the bearing, hadn't got the pace of the kart back to where it had been earlier in the week. Chris P faired no better, but I hoped Spiros would perform better on new tyres, but it wasn't to be.
It's always difficult trying to figure out what's going on when you're not in the kart, but is was fairly plain that somethimg wasn't right as soon as I got in for my second stint at 02:00 on Sunday morning. Even with a tiny steering input, the engines just seemed to bog down really badly and I struggled to do high 58's. By 80 minutes into my stint it was getting way worse, and then the right hand engine started reving very high as if the chain had come off, and then it fixed itself??? This pattern continued for 3 or 4 laps and I was losing 3-4 seconds. I tried to signal to the pits but I got no response and eventually the engine just stopped and I had to come in, to find all of the team asleep! I was not best pleased.
Each engine has a front and back engine mount and the bolt on front one on the RHS engine was almost compeltely out, allowing the engine to pivot on the rear mount. This was what had caused the worsening performance and eventual failure as the other mount point gave up and broke. It took us 10-15 minutes to fit a spare engine and I went back out to complete a double stint. The kart handled a bit better, but I could do no better than a 58.5, but given that it was the dead of night, it was what I expected.
After my double stint, that was it for me and we had a fairly clean run from that point, apart from the same engine mount falling off the kart, right in front of us with 4 laps to go. I latter found out that they found a crack in the chassis at the left rear of the kart, which explains why the kart lost pace - Chris B had done a 57.5 on the Wednesday or Thursday, and his fastest race lap was a 58.7, so 1.2 seconds would seem about what the damaged chassis was costing us.
It alway nice to be the quickest driver in the team, but I'd rather be the slowest, and get a better result :-) We finished 23rd - without the problems we'd have made the top 10, but it wasn't to be.
For next year. I really want to try again, but wouldn't it be great if we could get a team from the drivers at Crail?
