DJ Motorsport Enduro R4 Weds 20th June 07

The fourth round of the DJ Motorsport Enduro Series at Buckmore Park was to prove a 'testing' one for myself and Richard (my partner for this series, on the right in the photo).

The series is over ten rounds, with nine results to count. The karts are the Buckmore Park hire Thunderkarts. They can attain about 80mph, but are heavy due to all the protection around them. Unlike owner-driver series, there are no minimum weight limits, so the 80+ kilo drivers will always struggle against the anorexic 50 kilo drivers!!

Points are awarded for qualifying, at 10, 20, 40 and 50 mins through the race, and for the final positions. A further ten points is awarded to every team for turning up on time!! The maximum is 190 points if a team arrives on time, qualifies on pole and leads throughout. One less point is awarded at each stage to second, reducing by one point all the way down to 30th (and below) who get 1 point at each stage.

Each team must have two drivers who must swap over between 25 and 35 mins of the 1 hour race.

Now I've set the scene, I'll tell you about the disaster of a race we had on Wednesday.

The allocation of karts is a lottery, and the equipment most certainly is NOT equal!! We got a bad one with no straight line speed, and made the mistake of not swapping it during qualifying - we ended up 17th on the grid out of 29 karts - a disaster!

We changed the kart at the end of the first lap (another mistake) and I was making my way back through the field when, on lap 17, my right rear tyre went pop! Yet another kart change, back to the rear of the field, and over a lap down put us completely out of contention.

I battled my way back to 23rd and handed over to Richard on lap 34. He drove a good race and we managed to finish 18th - our worst position ever I believe.....

We have achieved the grand total of 65 points, again our worst ever, and lie 8th in the championship table. Last year we finished 4th, and with just six rounds left we have an extremely tough uphill battle to even equal that feat. Here's hoping for a little better luck than we've had so far this year......

Here are the links to DJ Motorsport http://www.djmotorsport.co.uk/enduroseries.html

and Buckmore Park http://www.buckmore.co.uk/content.php/000

Sunday 17th June - Bayford Prokart Endurance Series

Well, I got the 'new' engines on and sorted the kart as best I could for the race, but I did not get a chance to test after putting the engines and new stub-axles on. Consequently, how the whole package performed would be a mystery to me...

The engines were not too bad, but not a strong as my old ones - I'll have to do some work on them. What was of more concern was the handling. We were racing on a set of tyres that had already done about five hours, but I would have expected the handling to be better. We changed a few settings, but still suffered from bad oversteer throughout qualifying and the race.

I decided to leave Robert out for as long as possible during qualifying so that he got used to the kart, and not worry about grid position. We therefore qualified 11th out of 12 karts.

In the race things were not quite as bad and I made my way up to eighth and held this until lap 31 when the left-hand engine developed a mis-fire. I pitted and after clearing the offending carb's main jet, rejoined dead last and eight laps down. From then on we were at the mercy of other teams faltering, and this happened to a couple of teams and we ended up 10th at the flag.

On route I set a lap time of 53.47, about a second off the winner's fastest lap.

All the results and lap times can be found on MyLaps.com - use this link to go there:- http://www.mylaps.com/results/newResults.jsp?id=568274

All prep and no go....

Well, here I go with my first posting...

I've been racing karts for about the last six or seven years, won a few hire-kart championships and have loads of silver-ware. I bought my own prokart, a 2000 Solo from a lad called Tom who then raced with me for a couple of years before going on to bigger and better things.

Here's my kart with my current co-driver, Andrew at the wheel.

We've had a 'steady' season, competing in the Bayford Meadows Prokart Endurance Championship and some selected rounds of the National Prokart Championship.

Last round, during a six hour race, we had an engine seizure about four hours into the race. After changing the offending engine we finished 12th.

I'm racing on Sunday at Bayford (3hrs) with two engines I've bought from one of the 'top' teams, but Andrew is not available. As a result my youngest son Robert (19) will be racing with me - should be good experience for him.....

I'll let you know how it goes.