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03/10/06 In this last race of the club’s season, we got lucky with the weather, the rain holding off. I also got lucky with my kart, scoring my first decent result of the year in an ANKC race. Starting with a handicap position right at the back of the grid I managed to drive through to take the lead a very satisfying 5 minutes before the end of the race. The championship finishes with Louis Lazarus, Kam Ho, and Mike Snell in 1,2,3.. 09/09/06 The weather was fine for the club’s end of season party on the 3rd September. About 35 people attended, with 10 teams taking part in the race. Each team had at least one member for whom it was their first time at Whilton Mill, and for some their first time in a kart! A good time was had by all. Following a bit of a screw up with the timing at the club race on 6th September, it was decided that the results were too inaccurate to be counted towards the championship, so this event has been dropped from the results. As a consequence the number of races counting towards each driver’s championship score has been reduced to 4 out of the 6. Post race analysis suggests that the main cause of the problem was that the race timing was not started until some time after it should have been. Of course, with our handicap system this totally invalidates the results. Daytona MK have announced another Bucks Business Challenge Series. The club has entered 3 * 2-man teams. 11/08/06 The club’s end of season party at Whilton Mill on the 3rd September is definitely on now. So far we have 10 teams of 3, plus a number of people just coming along for the BBQ. There is plenty of room for more. 13/06/06 Following from the the impossibility of awarding any points for the practice session prior to last Wednesday’s race, the Club Committee met to consider what course of action to take, with the aim of being as fair as possible to everyone affected. It was a tough decision to reach as whatever the outcome there would inevitably be some winners and some losers. Anyway, they told me their decision this morning, and I have now adjusted the championship points accordingly. It was decided that no points would be awarded for any practice/qualifying session for the entire championship this season, and any points previously won would therefore be cancelled. The big winners from this decision seems to be anyone called Stuart, with Shearman jumping into 2nd place in the championship table, and Bone overtaking brother Steve. 12/06/06 Last Wednesday we returned to Whilton Mill for the 2nd time this year on a very hot and sunny evening. There was an unfortunate incident during the second lap which led to the race being red flagged due to Zac Hillier having a kart parked upside-down on his head. However, there was no harm done, other than to the kart! Once the track had been cleared the race clock was reset and the race started again. Unfortunately, this led to a problem with extracting the practice lap times from the race computer system. This was not noticed at the time because the use of our handicap system means that these times are not used to form the grid. However, it does mean that it was not possible to award any bonus championship points for qualifying lap times. 11/05/06 On Monday the final round of the Bucks Business Challenge (Group 2) was held in warm but very soggy conditions. Soggy, because due to the temperature and humidity many people opted not to wear waterproofs. Team Abbey 1 took 1st prize, having won all 3 races. Team Abbey 2 took 2nd prize by the closest of margins, matching Team IT Resolve on both points and race finishing positions the decision had to be made on the quickest lap time recorded throughout the 3 rounds! Last night the club returned to Whilton Mill for the first time in a couple of years. We got lucky with the weather and had a fine sunny evening rather than the rain which had been forecast earlier in the week. As predicted (by me), everyone was from 3 to 3.5 seconds a lap quicker than they were in the old WM kart fleet. The evening was just spoiled a bit by a mysterious problem which affected a number of engines. Some just cut out, and some had a problem with misfiring. This latter problem affected me for the last quarter of the race, and by the final few laps I was losing over 3 seconds a lap! A couple of theories were suggested as to the cause of these problems, but my own favourite is that it was down to a batch of contaminated fuel. We held a race within a race for Team Abbey 2 from our Bucks Business Challenge entries to decide which 2 members of the team could join Abbey 1 on their F1 Test Day. Steve Bone had some bad luck with a broken brake cable, so Dan Goodings and Stuart Shearman are the lucky ones who get the chance to join Louis and myself at Silverstone. 06/04/06 At last, the new club season started yesterday on a dry and sunny evening. By popular vote we have gone back to using a handicap system, and Daytona agreed to adopt the system we first devised many years ago for use at Whilton Mill. Under this system everyone starts from the pit lane, with drivers being flagged off at various intervals over a period of 70 seconds (just under 1 lap). We had some superb, very enjoyable racing, with most people actually getting to do more head to head racing than they do under the usual format of qualifying for grid positions. Starting from the back of the field, 70 seconds down on some people, I loved it, and I believe that the majority of other drivers also did. However I should sound a cautionary note. If you enjoy close racing then trust the system even if you think you may be faster or slower than reflected by your handicap. One driver thought he was starting too far forward so entered the pits voluntarily to drop back. The effect of this was that people just a bit faster than him passed him while he was in the pits, and people who were faster still passed him early in the race instead of later. The overall effect was that he missed out on a lot of action, and finished almost a lap down instead of fighting for a podium position. There may be occasional anomalies due to karts and drivers having off days, or even the odd magical day, but the handicap system is self adjusting over a few races. |
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