OEKC Round 4 – Lydd
June 24th 2012
A very wet day.
This race was make or break in our championship pursuit this year. We badly needed a good result with it being a double points round and our unlucky start to the season.?Even though this is the halfway point of the season, another bad result would leave us too far behind to challenge for the championship.
We came to Lydd the week before to test and set the kart up for the track. Race day came along with a lot of rain. What we found in testing would not be too much use. We got a decent wet setup on the kart and went out for practice. The kart felt good but we were not sure how good compared to the rest of the field.
We qualified in 7th position but expected more. Before race start the track dried out enough and we decided to start on dry tyres. It appeared the rest of the field made the same decision. We went with a kind of setup in between wet and dry in case the weather changed again as more rain was predicted.
The race started and Reece was careful not to throw it off the track as conditions were still wet and damp off-line. On the first lap a big accident happened ahead of Reece which he luckily avoided. We were starting to capitalise on others misfortune while Reece?s speed was greater than most of the chasing pack. Within a few laps we were in 2nd position with 3rd place hanging on and the rest of the field quite a bit slower.
Reece pitted with a 30second advantage on 3rd position. Richard continued the chase but we soon realised that our pit stop was not good and 3rd position was now 5 seconds behind and lapping fractionally quicker. Most of this stint was spent holding off 3rd position but they eventually got past and we were now in 3rd. Our second pit stop was better and Jon went out to race for another hour. The fuel consumption was greater than anticipated so this was something we were calculating as the race continued.
After Jon pitted, Reece continued and we made a very quick pit stop halfway through his run which would take him to the end. We didn?t anticipate having to do this but we had 4 laps advantage on 4th position. The last 20minutes of the race took a turn for the worse as the rain came down heavily. Some teams came in to change to wet tyres but we decided to slow down and stay on slicks. Reece showed his skill in keeping the kart on track while others were flying off. We were taking chunks of time out of 2nd position but in the end we ran out of time and finished 3rd.
Finally a good result with no bad luck. This brings us back into the championship and we now sit 5th overall out of 28 with another four rounds to go.
