Final Round @ Clay
“Track on the hill”
The infamous Clay microclimate greeted the team on the Saturday test day, with the wind slowly destroying the pop ups left out from Friday testing it was clear that if the rain arrived it would pretty much be pointless dragging the karts from the vans…….and then it started raining!
With such little benefit at this stage of the season we cleared off to the pub….as you do.
Race day and Henry, Jamie and Luke were eager to get the karts ready and get on with it.
A damp day greeted the team and the heats were a straight forward affair with Jamie and Henry finding themselves caught in traffic.Unable to pass the train, they could have been maybe 6 places further up in each session but it is a learning process and both accepted that we could have been further forward. Luke Preston enjoying his new BRK chassis was settled into the top 5 but experiencing a level of misconduct from another driver that left a few people shocked, Luke with a new level of focus fresh from Super One was dealing with the attention well and left Dad to contest the matters.
With Henry well placed to take the best novice trophy his consistent pace had him as the quickest novice but he had a race on his hands, Jamie qualified in 17th which is lower than usual but reflected the days on track events and the traffic issues earlier.
The final saw Jamie looking really strong and within 1 lap was in 11th, Henry had started his battle and Luke had moved very briskly from his mid order start following the day’s events and was planning to get up with Alex very quickly.
Jamie finished up 14th, Henry 19th and Luke a very credible 5th place overall
With Jamie only 3 tenths on his fastest time off the leaders the pace was there but the tyres went away mid-way through, Henry pushed hard but missed out on best novice by .5 of a second and Luke drove a great race but with the shorter final could not bridge the gap to the leaders, Luke is an extremely versatile driver now and demonstrated this at Clay, keep an eye out for him over the winter series where we are confident of a win for him before he goes back to S1 in 2016.
Jamie and Henry move on to other matters until their clubs reopen in the new year and we look forward to rolling out Freddie again at Bayford with his mentor Jordan soon.
If there was disappointment this weekend it was the level of abuse being hurled in different directions again during a meeting, this club in particular deal with the problem really well on the whole but the fact they have to deal with it is very sad. The future of our class is in our own hands and whilst we all get competitive (I had a small difference of opinion recently at the same track) it’s difficult to deal with, I will always without question defend my drivers publicly if accused of anything (and then berate them with Dad on return to the awning if needed!) purely because it is such a public moment on the grid for a youngster to handle, but I have had conversations recently that indicate we are on another downward slope with it, please let us get to the Spring sunshine again and wellbeing that it brings so once again we can laugh on the grids!
The plans for 2016 are in place, the team will announce its calendar in December and we look forward to seeing you out there….you may even see a couple of larger karts too!