The Racers Edge

At the age of 40, I decided to go motor racing - The ultimate mid life crisis.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Monaco - Quelle Domage!

If there's one thing i've learned in my 10 years of racing, it's that you shouldn't make predictions.


This year's team for the 14th Monaco Kart Cup consisted of Darron Anley , Martin Farmer, Declan McDonnell and DJ - LCA Racing owner, Chris Hyman was unable to get out of a commitment to race in British GT. (where he didn't even get to race as his team mate was involved in a race ending incident :-()


This years karts were the same as last years, but with a change of tyres and brake pads. Overall, this increased the lap by just over 2 seconds from last years times. But Martin only lost 6/10th from his last years pace, whilst I lost a second - Which annoyed me, but I have to remember that i've done very little racing this year and see it as the improvement that it was. Plus Martin is a very talented driver!


Practice was fairly straight forward with Martin and I fairly quickly getting back into the Monaco grove, and Darron and Declan getting to grips with their first laps.


As expected Martin looked to be quickest and he posted our best qualifying time to put us 21st on the grid. The times were so close that another 0.5 would have put us 10th.


So Martin started the first race and didn't make it to the end of the first lap - he avoided a mid field crash, but the kart just cut out and he couldn't restart it - we managed to get it going again but had lost around 8 laps by that point. Still, we battled through and got back to 23rd by the end of the heat, 10 laps off of the leader. In avoiding the start of race shunt we had picked up a tiny bend to the rear axle, so we got that fixed before race 2.


Declan started race 2 and he was now on the pace and we were up to 15th when Darron took over. After about 10 minutes he got involved in a nasty accident that badly bent the rear axle and a front track rod. This cost us just over 30 minutes in the repair tent and another 32 laps. From then on it was a case of finish the heat and plan for Sunday's race. We were now 37th - 42 laps down on the leader.


Our goal for Sunday's race was to break into the top 30 but a mid race rain shower soon killed that plan. By the time they had fitted wet tyres to all of the karts, the circuit was almost dry - so in total we got 65 minutes racing in heat 3 and finished 32nd overall - a total of 43 laps down.


My pre race goal of a top ten finish was a distant memory and I was very disappointed. But as I said, predictions & plans in racing are not the smartest move…….


But plans are already underway for next years event - I will get top ten eventually!


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home