To race or not to race…

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With Junior now into his GCSE exams and the Super One MSA round at Llandow almost upon us, I had no intention of entering this month and planned to use this as our dropped round. The club contacted me this evening to say that there are no S1 drivers entered in case that changed my mind. It shouldn’t. But it does make me think! There are a lot of negatives to overcome: Junior has an exam on Monday, the kart hasn’t been touched since last month, our steering wheel might be bent, my tyres are two rounds old, the race motor needs running in, I had already diverted the funds to a prokart rental for myself at this month’s Clay Pigeon IKR round! On the plus side: we haven’t karted for a month, his exam is English Literature and it’s a race day!!!

Perhaps I’ll mention this in conversation with Mrs Karting Dad to gauge the reaction!

Competitive finally!!! Crashing back to earth literally…

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After another early start we arrived at the track at around 7:45 and the brief was to get the race engine on, get through scrutineering and then worry about how the Hell I was going to manage push-starting with my bad back! I had had the the loan of a push-start bar at Saturday practice but I had no idea how it would work on a race day as there aren’t normally any ‘spare’ TKM dads about. Having applied four lots of sun cream and still caught the sun the day before, I was glad we stayed behind after racing on Saturday to get the awning up, slotting into one of the many gaps that appeared when the bambino dads left for the day taking everything with them.

I had the offer of help from the dad and/or mechanic of one of Junior’s friends (thanks, Team Johns!) so, number by half a tube of Deep Heat, push-starting turned out to be ok. With his newly adjusted brakes Junior was under instruction to just make sure he got a good feel for them. He didn’t look particularly quick but came in beaming like I had never seen after a session (it was a unique sight given his normal attitude towards his kart):  he had lapped within a tenth of his PB without really pushing and loved the feel for the brakes 🙂

The club had changed the start line for this meeting, starting and finishing on the finish line instead of starting on Hangar Straight and taking Raymonds as the first corner. I had some reservations about this but the change went really well, the drivers seemed to sort themselves out nicely and I saw no contact going into The Hook. We started 9th for Heat #1, made a reasonable start but got caught up with one of the Super One boys who was practising ahead of their series opener at the track next month; he made a move up the inside going into The Hook, there was a bit of a squeeze exiting the right-handed kink on the exit and they were side-by-side before their wheels got locked together and both karts went off. Junior caught and passed the last-placed kart but finished adrift. Positively though, the kart felt excellent and we were closer to the pace than we would normally be. Junior set a new PB of 45.4s 😀

We made very little change to the setup for Heat #2. Junior started 7th and found himself on the back of the front pack of six drivers. Amazingly, he wasn’t getting dropped and was even being held up by one of the quicker drivers! Although he observed the ‘follow me, let’s catch the leaders’ gesture for a few laps, he soon felt the need to make a move. It took a couple of laps to make the move stick as he kept losing out to the cutback and, when he did finally pass, the leaders had flown. He finished 5th and set another new PB of 45.2s. Overnight, Junior had gone from lapping at 45.8s on the Saturday to 45.4s in the warm-up and now 45.2s! Needless to say I was very thankful to the dad who had sorted his brakes – those 3/10ths he had promised were beginning to look like a conservative estimate!!! I cannot tell you how great it was to see him competing in the pack. We were still a couple of tenths off of the leader’s pace but that was irrelevant; we were properly competing for the first time *ever*, not because we were defending or scraping a result because of DNFs. This appeared as though it could be our true pace! I could have kissed the dad who had helped us there and then. But I didn’t… 😉

Heat #3 saw us start in third. Junior made a good start, holding off some early moves from the visiting Super One driver and tailing second. He was able to follow second through as he passed the leader at Chandlers and the next few laps were the highlight of my time as a karting dad so far: Junior and the leader were lapping within the same tenth of one another and, as third and fourth tangled, they pulled a little clear at the front. I’ll forever remember the commentator’s words as Junior set a new fastest lap of 44.929! A sub-45s lap?!? A few of the others had done this at previous rounds and I remember them being really chuffed but Junior to join the club so suddenly… initially I thought the commentator had gotten the wrong driver but, as Junior continued his pursuit of the leader, a grin spread across my face – a *really* big grin. There probably four laps remaining before things started to go wrong; third and fourth caught us and we got pushed aside entering Surtees, as third went for a gap that was always going to be closed. Junior controlled the kart but lost ground and the place and was now under threat from fourth; the driver we had tangled with in Heat #1 and who had proven to be pretty aggressive throughout the day. We survived one more lap and then, as Junior saw it, we just got wiped out entering Raymonds. He didn’t see the other kart at all but said he felt his rear wheel get whacked as he was on the entry apex. The other kart kicked up and span over Junior, hitting the engine, Junior and the steering wheel on the way over. I quickly ran up from the viewing area (with my bad back I had committed the cardinal sin of being a direct drive dad that wasn’t signed on as a pusher) as the race was stopped and the ambulance came out. The paramedics had Junior’s helmet supported (a technique I learnt at the marshal training day!) but, thankfully, the kart had missed his head with his shoulder taking most of the impact. They wanted him x-rayed and so our day was done. I picked up the broken parts of the engine (I had always wondered what it took to snap an engine fin) and, because we finished third after the count back, went through scrutineering (who proceeded to record everything that had broken!). I spoke to the Clerk after who reported it a ‘racing incident’. Hmmm… there had been a lot of those through the day; lot’s more than you would normally see at Llandow. I’ve some things to say on this but we’ll leave it for another time.

We had a choice: leave everything at the track and go to the local hospital, pack up and go to the local hospital (leaving the kart on the trailer in the hospital car park) or go home, unload the trailer and then head to hospital. Junior had limited movement in his shoulder at that point but I chose the latter – at least I could safely leave everything at home before heading to A&E. Whilst I was relieved that Junior was ok, Junior was gutted that he’d miss the final especially after having finally found some astonishing pace. I felt bad at having doubted Junior. There have been lots of thoughts about the future in my mind during our struggles but to think that we might have sold up and moved on had we not almost stumbled into the fact that his brakes weren’t good enough when, overnight and after a 5-minute adjustment, he had found 9/10ths of a second (I initially typed ‘we found’ but he derserves all the credit here). Of course, we had the race engine on and better tyres than we had used the day before but regardless – we had found so much pace and I was so glad that it wasn’t the driver that was the problem, as it had seemed for so long. I was pleased too that although our chassis is six years old, Junior had proven his equipment is good enough to compete.

So that was that! We packed up in record time. Junior had plenty of visitors whilst he was sat waiting for me to get a move on – partly because of his injury, partly because of his pace! The other party involved in the accident wasn’t one of them though, they just got sorted for the final! Maybe it was one of those awkward decisions whether or not to say something after an incident between drivers, maybe that’s the difference between those who compete for fun and those that *have* to win. We watched the live timing of the final in the car enroute to A&E – it wasn’t the result we would have wished for but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Two hours later we had left hospital with no broken bones confirmed – just an difficult conversation with Junior’s rowing coach that he would not now be available for the eight at a big competition this weekend.

I usually tend to keep things largely anonymous (although you don’t have to work in Cyber Security to figure out the names of most of the people discussed in the blog!) but I have to thank Lou and Ryan Edwards of RED Motorsport for spotting the issue and sorting the brakes out for us. Who knows how quick we’ll be when we return in June (given the predicted influx of Super One drivers for the next round, driving standards that were certainly more aggressive than are the norm at Llandow and Junior sitting his GCSEs, we’ll be skipping May regardless of whether or not Junior is fit to race) but it really does feel that we have just made a massive leap forward. It is unfortunate that I could have sorted this out months ago had I known better but, in my defence, a good few people much more experienced than I had looked at them! Maybe all of that time driving with sub-optimal brakes will now be an advantage 😉 We may not find ourselves competing at the very front of the pack but all we have ever wanted is for Junior to be able to race with his mates and it looks like we might be there at last. I’ll be found crying into a beer somewhere if proves not the case…

44929

My new favourite number: 44.929 😀

Cost of weekend: £100 practice/ race entry, £13 petrol, £12 fuel, £13 bridge fees, £20 new chain

Total spent this year: £1,961

The mechanically inept noob!

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Saturday was a bad one, even by my own standards. We arrived to find that almost all of the perimeter pit spaces had gone, it was nigh on impossible to get the awning pegs into the ground where we had chosen to set up camp, we aborted and moved to the very far corner of the track only to find that the pathetic velcro straps on the sides of our awning were no match for the wind and ended up ditching the awning and slotting the car/trailer in somewhere a little more desirable!

Despite this, we were still ready for the day’s first JTKM session but, when Junior was sat in his kart on the dummy grid, I noticed that there was a lot more travel in the steering column than I was comfortable with. It looked as if the steering column bearing (which wasn’t that old) had worn. Caught between the desire to at least get a few test laps in and removing the kart from the dummy grid, I opted for the former (I’m not sure I would in future) with a warning to Junior to take it easy and come straight in if he had any concerns. He duly drove straight back into the pits, throwing his gloves into the seat and going off on one: the steering column wasn’t the issue, the fuel tank lid was leaking. This isn’t the first time we’ve experienced this – why is it so hard to make a fuel cap that fits correctly??? After finishing his little strop, I sent Junior off to get some hand towels from the toilets so that we could get back out for a few minutes. In my rush to get Junior started, I just grabbed the back end, started running and immediately felt something go in my back. I dropped the kart way too soon and had to carry on pushing until he got going but I was in agony! I like to think of myself as being pretty fit – push starting has certainly never been a problem but sometimes these things just happen I guess. It was one of those back injuries that catches your breath. Not good at the start of a race weekend 🙁

The rest of the day was about trying to cope with the pain whilst keeping Junior out on track. Engine mount bolts were the biggest challenge given my restricted mobility. I was able to borrow a push-start bar from one of the other dads; I’d never before used one but I quickly became a big fan! Our pace was disappointingly as has long been the norm: we were around 7/10ths off the pace. We tried a few things like altering the front width and bleeding the brakes which Junior felt made a little difference. I was talking to one of my good friends and, at one point, questioned whether perhaps Junior wasn’t up to this type of karting – we hadn’t progressed at all from the summer of last year; Clay had been replaced by Llandow and, although we had the novelty of a new track, we were now back to familiar struggles. Junior had never shown any sign of unhappiness and, as long as he is still enjoying it, we would of course continue but in the back of my mind still lingered thoughts of IKR and Prokarts 🙁

Although we weren’t where we wanted to be, at least we had run fairly smoothly. Until the final session at least. Junior came in after one lap complaining that ‘something happened’. He couldn’t explain what. We’d just replaced a carb but it didn’t tie in with anything he was trying to describe. Although I’ve said before how you should always listen to your driver, I sent him back out to get more information. This time he came straight back complaining of a loud noise from the engine. I removed the chain guard and couldn’t believe what I was seeing: the chain was as tight as you can imagine, with no flex whatsoever. A couple of friendly dads passed and I asked if they’d ever seen a chain go so tight before. It was then that I noticed that the engine had lifted off of the mount in one corner, skewing the chain enough to cause the problem. I removed the engine and was working with one of the dads to remove the snapped engine mount bolts (it turned out that three had snapped). At this point the other dad was playing with the brake pedal and commented that our brakes were rubbish (these weren’t his actual words!), calling his lad over to have a look. I was focused on checking the engine for significant damage but was more than happy for them to adjust the brakes since Junior has long complained about them. The engine was going to need to visit my builder to have the bolts drilled out and the casing rethreaded (timely since the race engine was going to be off for rebuilding after the Sunday) and, once that was dealt with, the dad showed me how much more release there was in the brake pedal, claiming there were 3/10ths of a second in the improved brake performance. To be honest, I took this with a pinch of salt at the time. He was also less than complimentary about my mechanic skills: a ‘mechanically inept noob’ I think was the description although I don’t know where he would have gotten that from 😉 To be fair, I had had the brakes looked over by a number of people much more qualified than myself. No matter, they definitely felt better and we’d see how they fared on race day…

bridge

A variation on a theme 😉

 

Back for a little more practice!

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With Junior off of school for the Easter holidays, we took the opportunity to head back to the track for some more work on our lines. Although the sun was out it was insanely windy and, with no awning (we cannot accomodate the 6x3m awning in the Clio or the trailer – and I’m not even sure we’d have bothered trying!), we set up next to the viewing shelter to give us a tiny bit of cover. It was a quiet day on track – just us, a cadet and two bambinos initially so we shared an open track with them. Open tracks are normally great but, with the bambinos being so much slower we were finding it impossible to get any reasonable run at some quick laps.

After lunch, we had the track implement sessions so we had 15 minutes on/off through the afternoon until the younger drivers went home and then had the track to ourselves. This is the great thing about practising at Llandow – pick a day early in the week and you are likely to find it pretty quiet 🙂 Although it was hard for us to gauge our pace (there was another JTKM at the track for half the day but we always seemed to be on the opposite side of the track and I don’t really like being seen to intentionally tailing other drivers in any case), Junior did seem to be doing well. The lines were much better, much more consistent but you can never be certain if that is coming at the expense of speed through the corners. I’d take the slower, correct lines for now though! All in all, it was a really good day (bar the sunburn!): 101 laps seat time, some promise of better lines and no dramas 🙂 Hopefully we can show some improvement at the next club round.

Cost of day: £35 practice fee, £13 petrol, £9 fuel, £9 chain lube

Spent since last post: £25 new sprocket carrier, £6 new fuel hose/pulse pipe, £5 new (used) exhaust!!!

Total spent this year: £1,803.

Leading a race! Albeit briefly…

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With Junior’s 16th birthday falling the day after the race weekend, we decided that it would be nice to stay at the track on the Saturday night and grab a beer/some food with a few of the Dads/lads from the JTKM grid. This was partly just a really nice thing to do for Junior’s birthday but also in part because Junior had very little to open present-wise on the Monday! 🙁 Having had the engine problems so soon after a major rebuild, Junior’s main present was the engine repair. The new slicks, chain, sprocket and brake pads were all ‘gifts’ from the family although all were fitted and ready for the weekend.

Saturday practice was good enough. The pit lane was mentally busy with the club having attracted twice the number of entries mostly thanks to Formula Blue. Arriving on Saturday morning, we were very lucky to secure a nice pit spot with plenty of space to set the awning set up. Our tyres weren’t the best so our mission was just to try to implement some of the new lines that we had been practising. In that respect we failed really to find the consistency I had been hoping for but, to be fair, track time was in pretty short supply – we were on track once every 80 minutes! It was fairly uneventful barring us developing a habit it seemed of turning the action camera on *after* a session and recording nothing more than a long walk to the trailer (although we do have our wait in the scrutineering queue and the event itself – ping me if you are stuck for evening entertainment). Rather alarmingly, Junior’s kart got hit by a 1kg piece of lead that came bouncing down the track in the final practice session! :S

We were staying in accommodation about 5 minutes from the track. It was nice to drop off all of the kit and have a hot shower before heading out 🙂 Even better to spend the night amongst friends at a nearby hotel/restaurant – I can heartily recommend the gourmet burger at the St Mary’s Hotel, it was up there amongst the best I’ve ever had 😀 Sunday morning was blissful: getting up at 7:15 instead of 5:30 left me feeling *so* much more refreshed as we completed the 5-minute journey to the track!

Having scrutineered the night before we had plenty of time in which to prep the kart. The grids were posted and Junior was miffed to find that, now into his sixth race at Llandow, he still had no pole position! I can kind of sympathise – with only ten competitors, you’d be expecting a pole every three or four months. I understand that the club use a random system that does not take into account previous grid draws… if only Carlsberg made grid draw systems for motor racing, eh? 😉 With one of the entrants withdrawing, our starting positions were a reasonable 4th, 3rd, 9th.

Heat #1 was ‘ok’. Junior had a poor start, losing a couple of places at the first corner before gradually sliding back through the field, six seconds off the lead but ~0.3s off the pace, which I’d happily gave taken beforehand.

Heat #2 was the highlight of the day: Junior started third and, amazingly, LEAD THE FIELD INTO THE HOOK!!! I couldn’t tell you how it happened, as I was stood at the opposite corner of the track, but it was nice that we were leading on merit and hadn’t even started on the front row! 😀 Junior held the lead for into the second lap before he was passed by two karts but, even then, was doing really well in third until lap #4  when someone made a move into Surtees, running wide into Junior (who was attempting to hold it around the outside) and their wheels seemed to lock with Junior coming off the worst! 🙁 I started a conversation with the marshal about what he saw (I wasn’t overly pleased in the heat of the moment) before one of the deputy clerks told him to stop talking to me! With incidents elsewhere, Junior dropped to 7th before making up a place on the final lap. Junior was angry at the incident that had taken him out of the running but, having had a few laps to compose myself, I think it was more or less a racing incident. He’d come off worst and certainly wasn’t at fault (although I had thought that last month too) but I would never have lodged a protest over it… not unless the other party had previously called one on us, at least 😉 It was kind of a bitter sweet result since we had spoken about Junior getting his elbows out a little and not making it quite so easy for people to pass him but, in fighting for position, we’d lost out. Junior had also been shown his first ever black/white flag for an attempted move in Raymonds a few laps from the end! 😮

Heat #3 told us we still had a long way to go. Starting 9th, Junior made up a couple of places after an incident but we struggled to stay with the pack and annoyingly lost two places on the final lap. We finished 8 seconds adrift and were 0.6s off the pace which was blisteringly quick.

As seems commonplace for TKM, the clouds gathered over the lunch break and there were spells of drizzle ahead of our final. The track looked damp but I didn’t think that there was really enough to offer encouragement to anyone looking at the wet option. The pole sitter, however, opted for inters and pulled a little clear of the pack although took one challenger (on slicks) with him and was soon passed. The leader was really flying, pretty much in a class of his own, as he had clearly sussed that the track was there to attack. After a big slide early on, the penny dropped a little too late for Junior; who only really got going in the last couple of laps. He was adrift of the main pack but was quickly catching the pole sitter on his inters at the end, passing him after a final lap incident to finish in 6th place.

The race day was a mixed bag for us: we had lead a race for the first time and raced in the pack for large parts of the races in which we started in the top half of the grid but we still struggled with the lines and I know that one or two of the faster drivers weren’t fully appreciative of Junior’s fighting for position. It’s a tricky one. I can see their point of view: Junior is just holding them up and they will eventually pass but just dropping through the field is no fun. We’d gone from being very simple to overtake to being much tougher (relatively speaking) although we definitely need to find a happy medium and learn when to just tuck in behind after being passed. I cannot promise we’ll find that balance imminently but we’ll work on it.

Cost of weekend: £95 practice/ race entry, £13 petrol, £12 fuel, £45 accommodation, £40 food

Total spent this year: £1,701 and we’re only into the second month of the season!?!

My wasted rebuild

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After our chain snapping woes at our practice day, I hastily got the engine head off to see what was going on. Data analysis showed that the engine had hit 21,306rpm!!! 🙁

Sh*t! :(

The top piston ring was stuck firmly in place and all evidence suggested that the piston had hit the head. RIP my three-day old piston.The crank was also out of alignment. If there was any positive to be taken from this, the head at least looked ok. I had it collected by a friendly engine builder for a new piston and repair.

Things got worse when I was informed that my lovely new crank was slightly twisted although Tal-Ko assured me that this could be straightened and I didn’t pass up on the opportunity to save £166!

Having run a single Panther chain for the biggest part of 2014, I was fed up with my ‘cheaper’ chains snapping so ordered another trusty Panther and Talon sprocket – I am pretty keen to avoid any future chain woes and will be running my engine stop bolt a lot closer to the engine in future.

Cost of engine repair: £180

Costs since last post: New brake pads, £25; 2x Shell M Oil, £20;Dot 5 Brake Fluid, £10; Gaffer tape, £5; Insulation tape, £2; cable ties, £2; Chain and sprocket bundle, £50

Total spent this year: £1,496

Getting help

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Our February race weekend was our third day at the track in eight days. Even before the weekend and our lack of pace, we already had a speedy return to the track booked in: I had decided to get Junior some coaching! This wasn’t a decision taken lightly, as £100 is a decent chunk of the monthly budget, but it was one that I had been mulling over since the turn of the year. I was pretty sure that the setup was in the right ball park and that most of the time that we were off was in Junior’s lines. There were a few people who I’d have been very happy to work with; in the end I opted for the one that Junior didn’t know – mostly in the hope that he might listen to them more!

Although this was during the half-term, the track was pretty quiet – Junior, three cadets and a Senior TKM with a couple of Senior Rotax drivers turning up later. We spent the morning working on the line into The Hook. Things weren’t falling into place that quickly and then Junior clipped the back of a Cadet when he mistakenly thought that the door was being left open. That resulted in a bent steering column and track rod. With that fixed, Junior’s next hiccup came when stopped half-way around his outlap a couple of sessions later: the engine had backed onto the stop bolt which, with hindsight, was probably a little too far back (having previously cracked the old chassis at the engine-side bearing hanger, I had gone the opposite direction and changed from ~3mm off to ~12mm). I tightened everything up and we got back to working on the lines. That was until we experienced that wallet-bashing sound of the chain snapping. Junior coasted the kart up the straight and into the pits. Initially, things looked ok but, when we put the kart down for another session, we noticed there was very little compression: you could push the kart along with little effort. It was clear that engine was going to need looking at and the race motor was going to have to come out.

By this time, we had lost the majority of the afternoon. We got a really good final couple of hours in, running nicely in solitude as the sun set, although there wasn’t really enough time to work on all of the corners as we would have liked. It was a good, very educational day. Junior had some key areas for concern pointed out to him and we left with a much clearer idea as to how to cut a large chunk of the ~0.8s that we had been off at the weekend, just a shame the day was unusually poor from a problem perspective.

Thanks to Tim Wilson of TWM Motorsport for his expert coaching 🙂

Into the sunset :)Cost of day: Practice fee £40, bridge toll £6, fuel £10, petrol £10, coaching £100, new tyres for next race weekend £145

Total spent this year: £1,202

Stuck in a rut

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It would be fair to say that our karting career to date has been one of peaks and troughs. We’ve both enjoyed it but lately I’ve found myself spending more time dwelling on our struggle to get on the pace. You just really want to see your son (or daughter) get there – to cut that ~0.8s deficit and really nail those lines. To his credit, Junior just loves driving the kart but I’ve gotten wary of burdening him with my desire to bridge the gap that we seem to have had for as long as I can remember. Carrying more exit speed is far easier said than done and, on reflection, I wonder if I’ve overdone the ‘work on your lines’ thing at our practice day last weekend and ahead of the Llandow seasonal opener.

The weekend began with a wet track so Junior was out on the inters that we had ruined at the November round final, where we were caught out on the wrong tyre. Here they lasted just long enough to get us through the worst of it before they were too bald to be of any use and we switched to slicks. Unfortunately, Junior went off on his second lap – sending the kart backwards into the tyres at Chandlers and finishing off one of the bumpers that had done very well for us over the past two years (not to mention the two replacement bumper bolts that I had bought after our mishap the previous weekend!). We were doing some testing on a smaller sprocket but it wasn’t working for us. As soon as we went back up a tooth, Junior was much happier and a bit more competitive. The warning signs were there though as the day went on; The track was pretty quick considering the time of year and the early morning conditions but we weren’t able to get below 46.0s when the pace was low to mid 45s.

We were up and out early on Sunday to get the kart built for the race day. It was nice to see a couple of guest drivers who were here for a sighter with a view to the Super One Series round in May so we had a grid of eleven drivers. Heat #1 saw us start plum last. There was an incident at the start which took out a couple of drivers and we raced along in 7th – comfortably ahead of the rear of the field but adrift of the main pack. It looked like it might be lonely day for us. Heat #2 was where things started to take a turn for the worse: Starting in second, we managed to maintain our position around the outside of Raymonds and Junior set about his defence of his position. It was clear that we didn’t have the pace and Junior had been vulnerable on the run out of the Hook and into Surtees all day on the Saturday. We had spoken about it and decided that we’d take a narrower entry, try not to make it easy for other to pass and just see how things unfolded. It was going ok, especially for the pole man who was clearing off with haste! There were a number of laps where third lined up a pass as they headed up the straight but Junior’s is no slouch up the straight and is also pretty decent on the brakes into Raymonds so was able to maintain his position. That was until third place got the cutback and they headed into The Hook side-by-side: There was contact and it had to be Junior who lost out. He was clearly disappointed. The ‘offender’ was shown a warning but, from what I saw of it, it was rightly deemed a racing incident.

Heat #3 was where an already bad day went into meltdown. Junior started fifth and was hit from behind going into the first corner, punted the person in front who span and took out another driver. Junior dropped back and finished well adrift. Being the pusher who had volunteered to cover the furthest corner of the track, I’d not seen the incident but our finishing position and lack of pace through the day was taking its toll – I’d have quite happily packed up at that point. When I got back to the pits, Junior complained that he’d been hit and had his race ruined. I went to the Clerk to chat about the start and was told they were calling several drivers in. I was hugely surprised when only Junior and the driver that Junior had hit were called in (in relation to the start – two others were called in for another incident). This is where I can take two paths in my reporting of this – there is the ‘take it on the chin’ approach or the ‘redhead says what he thinks’ option!!! Given that the last time I publicly criticised officials, we were shown a straight black flag for contact two corners into our first heat at the subsequent round, I’ll try to stay on the cautious side…

In my attempt at small talk with the other Dad as we waited outside the Clerk’s office, he commented that this was what had happened in Heat #1 [Junior hitting his lad]. Junior’s look of astonishment at this little revelation told me all that I needed to know on this one. I am aware that with what follows I may be appearing to be wanting to have my cake and eating it but, in this instance, I can and I will – especially on my own blog, other points of view are available I am sure 😉 We were called in and the Clerk read out the report that suggested Junior had ploughed into the driver in front without braking. There was no mention of any other driver and I was already getting a sense of dodgy report Deja Vu. I had told Junior to just tell the truth – it hadn’t dawned on me for a second that we’d be taking the blame for this one. Junior said he’d been hit into the driver in front (naively, it also hadn’t occurred to me until this point that this might be an excuse the Clerks hear a lot) and agreed he’d caused the driver in front to spin. The driver’s explanations were pretty clear then the Dads got their chance to chime in; I questioned why the other party hadn’t been called in and Junior was asked who had hit him – as if he was going to have been looking behind him!?! I commented that it wasn’t fair for them to be asking him to name anyone as, although he could make a reasonable guess that it was the driver directly behind him on the grid, he couldn’t be certain of that. And that was that  – we soon got called back and were penalised on the back of a damning report as incorrect as it was incomplete!!! The contact behind had gone unspotted and the claim he hadn’t braked… I can only assume someone got carried away with the drama of it all!

It was a resigned feeling rather than an angry one after that. We’d always had a policy of Junior offering an apology to any driver he’d hit on track and, if at fault for any reported incident, he’d put his hand up and say he’d made a mistake. I’m not sure we’ll continue to adopt that policy – I know that the officials are doing their best and can only give what they see but we’ve been only the wrong end of a couple of duffers now and, in this instance, we would have been better off being less forthcoming and certainly naming the suspected third party. In the end, it was too easy for them to blame Junior.

The Final was all about getting as much packing up done as we could beforehand. The Clerk gave the grid the ‘loading’ speech after two incidents in three heats but, to be honest, I have never seen it at Llandow. Normally drawing the pushing zone furthest away doesn’t help in that respect! Of course the drivers like to point the finger… The majority of first corner incidents are caused by drivers getting caught out with the concertina effect as the grid steam into the first corner. We have been guilty of that a few times last year – it’s a mistake you wish they would learn from but there is no intent and it’s certainly not loading (which, to me, is when you are pushing someone into the first corner, denying them the chance to brake until you’ve shoved them wide enough to get by on the inside). The race itself was uneventful in so far as it was further confirmation of our lack pace. We stuck around to applaud the winners and then headed off the McDonalds for some Chicken Selects and a banana shake.

Cost of weekend: £95 practice/ race entry, £26 petrol, £13 fuel

Total spent this year: £891

Our 2015 shakedown

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Although we made an early start to the year in a borrowed kart, it was really good to get Junior out in his own kart at the weekend for a shakedown ahead of the opening round of the club championship next week. Having had the chassis stripped right down for a respray (that I susbsequently deferred in favour of touch-up), it’s always a welcome relief to see the thing remain in one piece! I had spent a good chunk of the Saturday trying to get my action camera optimally fitted. The Sony HDR-AS30V has so far seemed like a very nice piece of kit but it is woefully let down by Sony’s lack of mount options: No tilt mount was available at release date and when they did attempt to correct that omission, they produced a tilt mount that lacked full 180 degree movement, opting for one that rotates in 30 degree increments (which sucked on the nassau) 🙁 So I had bought some M3 bolts and rubber spacers in a bid to make something that at least worked for me.

It was a wonderfully sunny day considering the time of year. The track was already dry and grippy at 10am even if there were patches of frost remaining on the kerbs. Our first mission was to run in the practice motor. On the recommendation from my builder, we shortened the run-in time compared to the process we undertook for our race engine; Opting to spend a 10-minute session at 11,000rpm, 10-minutes at 13,000rpm and then a final 5-minutes at 15,000rpm. Running in after a full chassis strip was a good thing since the kart wouldn’t be worked too hard and I could check over all of the nuts and bolts whilst the engine was cooling down. After that we got on with our goal for the day: Improving Junior’s lines.

We’d talked about this. I don’t ever criticise Junior’s driving but there was a point a few weeks back where I told him that he needed to up his game if he wanted to compete this year. I’d be perfectly happy to carry on as we were if he was going to be happy finishing towards the back of the pack but, even allowing for some incompetence on my part, there were huge savings to be found in his driving. He didn’t like it at the time but I pay a lot of money in support of his enjoyment of this sport so, from time to time, I say my piece and expect him to listen to it! We walked the track first thing and agreed that we’d work on getting The Dell sorted. It is an important corner at Llandow, especially for Junior as he tends to lose time in Sector 1 so is often under pressure here as they enter the main passing zone.

Things went pretty well for us, lap-wise. Although the track was disappointingly busy so there were two groups of owner/drivers (2-strokes and 4-strokes) in addition to the odd arrive/drive session, which meant that we only got in 61 laps, Junior worked really well to the extent that he lapped within a tenth of his personal best time. The camera worked really well, the mount didn’t snap (for now) and the Alfano continues to impress me. Video footage of one of his sessions can be found on YouTube although I still haven’t mastered the quality loss that YouTube’s encoding process seems to inflict and I have no idea why I am the only one who can view the video at 1080p 60fps :S

Sony video footageWe had a couple of mishaps: one of Junior’s friends wanted to try our kart as he had some issues with his own but he only got in two laps before the chain snapped. Not really sure what caused it – I’d never had a chain snap until we got a shunt towards the end of last season, when we lost our reliable Panther chain but this EZ chain lacked the longevity (and just as I was singing the virtues of our switch to Silkolene chain lube after two years tolerating the mess caused by my purchase of a job lot of tins of Rock!). I hadn’t realised that the Alfano wasn’t switched on so we don’t have any data to suggest whether or not the engine revs went through the roof. Following this our day ended prematurely when, in plunging temperatures, Junior lost it on the out lap and snapped the bumper bolt. This did annoy me, probably more than it should have, especially since I had put the tyres up for a test without forewarning him!

Cost of day: Practice fee £40, bridge toll £6, fuel £10, petrol £10, new chain £20

Total spent this year: £757

A trip to the engine builders

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With the practice engine due a rebuild and my previously stated fear of posting engines via couriers, I recently drove up North to spend the day with my engine builder. It was a bit of a hike but being able to get the engine back same day coupled with the chance to see what goes on and learn more about something I am still largely ignorant made this an easy decision.

It proved to be a really insightful day: Stripping the engine down, measuring the wear on some of the key parts, putting names to parts and seeing where they fit in (I know I could study the Tal-Ko parts diagram but it is not quite the same). Crushingly, my con rod did need replacing 🙁 How an 8-inch piece of machined metal can cost £166 is beyond me. It would have been fair enough had this been a BMW part – perhaps I just don’t appreciate fine engineering? 😉

It was good to learn the measurements of the squish, the head volume, inlet and exhaust ports along with my ignition timing (something else I had hitherto paid no attention to). I cannot guarantee I’ll be able to explain the exact functions of all of those just yet but I am making progress! The builder was pleased with the engine and saw no reason why it would be 0.3s slower around Llandow than our race engine but we’ll run it in and assess if anything has changed. We took the measurements for the race engine too so that we could tweak things if need be.

It was getting pretty late by the time we got to carb rebuilds. It was the first time I had watched a full rebuild – there wasn’t that much to it so I will hopefully do my own in the not-too-distant future! My recent eBay-purchased 820 carb that had seen only one session’s use at Llandow since being cleaned and kitted proved to be fit for nothing more than donor parts since the throttle shaft spring no longer remains held by the body of the carb (yes, we did try another spring) 🙁

You know what they say about stuff being on eBay for a reason…

Cost of rebuild: £436

Total spent this year: £671