OEKC Round 1 – Rye House
March 17th 2013
After a long winter which hasn’t finished yet, March 17th saw the start of the 2013 OEKC 4.5hr Karting season. The first race was held at Rye House Hoddesdon which doubles up as our home circuit so we were hoping for a good start to our campaign.
The weather was terrible and very cold as it snowed the day before. Rye House did a great job in making sure the circuit was prepared to race. The day started wet but the rain had stopped. We qualified in the wet and managed to finish on pole with the fastest time of the morning. Between qualifying and the start of the race, the track started to dry and we found ourselves changing to a semi-dry setup for the start. Once the race started we struggled to get adequate heat into the tyres and slowly found ourselves getting overtaken to 9th position. As the tyres heated up we reclaimed most positions back to 2nd. The rain started falling again at around 45mins into the race. We decided to continue in the wet on slick (dry) tyres up until our first fuel stop and driver change.
During our stop we changed tyres to intermediate (worn wet) tyres and started lapping a fair bit quicker than the rest of the field. We were getting quicker and quicker until the track dried again and those with slick tyres caught and passed us once more. We tried to fight on but conceded and returned to the pits for a set of slick tyres. Once out on track, we were lapping at a good pace but had lost ground to the leaders.
After racing on the slicks for around 35mins the heavens opened once more and it rained extremely hard which was not going to dry never mind stop! We returned once again for wet tyres (full wet tyres) but when fitting one of the rear wheels, we encountered a problem of a cross-threaded wheel nut. This problem cost us about 18-20 laps and put us in 24th position. The conditions were appalling and to make matters worse we had no grip! Everyone seemed to be passing us and we had no answer. We decided to slow our pace even further to get more time from the fuel tank so we wouldn?t have to make another pit stop. This helped and we finished in 14th position.
We were very disappointed to say the least but salvaged some points which may help us as the championship continues. A few of our rivals had bad results also which means we were not alone in reduced championship points. It was a very up and down day where anything could have happened.
We later realised that we ran too low tyre pressures in the full wet conditions which accounted for lack of grip and also found a crack in our chassis which would have affected the handling.
