Moral victories just don't count...

Well..... if bad luck comes in threes, lets hope that my next race doesn't make it four!!
I raced on Sunday in the first of the Met Police events this year at Buckmore Park.
The format is a three hour, four driver endurance race with a minimum of five stops including a re-fuel, in the 390Pro hire karts.
Quite a few of the usual suspects were not available this time, so together with Dave (ex Kent Police) and Roy and his son Mark, we made up the team F.A.S.T. (Fathers and sons together). Thus Dave became my honourable dad for the day !!!!
The kart we were allocated did not seem to be working too well, so Roy came in and changed it during qualifying, then I went out and, to my suprise, put it on pole.
Mark took the standing start and dropped back to 2nd for a while but was visibly quicker than the leader. He took the fastest lap of the race on lap 15 (51.18) and went on to take the lead on lap 19. We left him out for a while longer than the 45mins we were each due and he handed over to Roy in the lead. The plan was for Roy to pit after 25 mins for fuel and then hand over to Dave at the 1.5 hour mark. However, he picked up a puncture on lap 71 and we dropped to 2nd and were given a naff kart. We had a chat with the mechanics and they duly wheeled out our original kart with new rear right tyre and we called Roy back for another change. After the change and fuel on lap 87 we were still 2nd, but Roy was soon a second or more quicker than before the change. Just shows the difference in these hire karts!!
We had now done two stops to most teams one, so this put us into a strong position even though we were second and not in the lead. Roy handed over to Dave at lap 101 and he was quickly into his stride putting in some good lap times in the mid to high 52s and as consistent as ever. As the leaders pitted we regained the lead on lap 113 and Dave, lapping quicker than 2nd place was able to build the lead to about 45 seconds.
Dave handed over to me on lap 151 and I rejoined in the lead still with about30 seconds in hand. Within a couple of laps I was down to low 52s and then into the 51s and around lap 164 lapped the second place kart and began to pull away.
All seemed to be going so well, and then the gremlins struck and the throttle jammed fully open causing braking into the hairpin and Paddock corner to be very entertaining! Although I was able to maintain my lead I knew that it would only be a matter of a couple of laps before the brakes were completely cooked and useless and I'd be joining the traffic on the M2!!!
I took the plunge and on lap 174 dived into the pits and changed the kart yet again.....
As soon as I got out in this particular kart I knew I was in for a tough time - it was useless!! The best I could manage was low 53s, and that was ringing the neck of the thing. Over a second a lap slower and the second placed kart was only 15 seconds down on us now and closing rapidly. A few dodgy moments with back-markers didn't help the cause and I soon found my hands full of kart number 11. I made my kart as wide as possible and made the best use of back-markers to keep us in the lead. Then a backmarker made a hash of things in hairpin one and helped me into a 5 to 6 second lead with about 3 minutes remaining. Phew I though, baring any more problems we can scrape a victory....... I didn't count on having completely the opposite problem to the previous one - instead of the throttle sticking open, this time, just as I exited the first hairpin, the throttle cable snapped!!!!! There it is - SOD's LAW!!
I sat there on the infield grass fuming and hitting the steering wheel so hard I bruised my hand. The marshall came out with yet another kart, and this one survived the remaining two and a half laps to the end of the race.
To lead until three minutes to the end of the race. To have had a whole lap's lead until 15 minutes from the end and then to be relegated to third through no fault of our own was just gutting.
If anyone from Buckmore staff is reading this - it is totally unacceptable for us to pay good money for a three hour race and to have three karts break on us! Oh well, good job there was nothing more than a cheap piece of silver coloured tin riding on it...........

UPDATE - Apparently we came second - the scoreboard was wrong, but the printout correct... this will be crutial as you will find out in a later post......