OEKC Round 2 – Milton Keynes
April 22nd 2012
A frustrating day.
We finally took delivery of our new Formula K kart which we raced for the first time today. With the preparation to get the new machine ready for endurance racing we had very little time to test the kart properly. We were also using another engine built by a new engine builder so, overall we had a lot of unknown elements to our racing today. Reece was still abroad so we had a two man team for this event.
The track was very fresh with no rubber laid down as it rained the night before. We went out for practice and found no grip! We dialled the kart into the track and went out to qualify. We qualified 10th which was disappointing and felt we had a few issues. The engine still wasn’t to our liking. It had loads to top end and seemed strong but still lacked a lot of bottom end power ?which along with low grip lost us a lot of time.
As the race started, we couldn’t keep up with the front runners and fell back to 17th position after about 30 minutes. The engine was a problem in the slow areas of the track and the kart still had low grip even though the track had started to rubber in. Richard was driving and decided to change driving style to save fuel as the outright pace was not there. After around the hour mark teams started to make their first round of pit stops. Richard took this opportunity to put in a series of strong laps on low fuel while the others came out with full tanks. This strategy worked as we made our first stop after 1h 2o mins in first position.
The races continued in a similar fashion with us playing the long game to rescue as many points as possible. After around 3 hours, while taking the infield hairpin, the chain came off and we had no drive. The kart was pushed into the pits where the chain was put back on and we were out again. This lost us much time. We continued to race and finished the day in 6th position which was a good achievement considering the issues we had.
We are now joint fifth in the championship which is good considering our difficult start to the season. We know what needs to be changed on the kart regarding grip and we continue to work with engines until we find the correct solution. We have a big test coming up before the next race at Whilton Mill. If the rain holds off we can get a lot of data and hope for a strong race.
