Tough Start in New Class - 15.03.2009
Easykart: Round 1 at Whilton Mill, Northamptonshire
Saturday
The opening round of the 2009 Easykart Championship turned out to be quite a puzzle for John, racing a new machine in an unfamiliar format against a grid of new faces. In fact, the only familiar aspect of the weekend was the Whilton Mill circuit, which John has raced at many times.
Saturday was largely uneventful, with the open practise allowing the drivers to get dialed into the circuit in anticipation of the challenge awaiting on Sunday. John showed good pace throughout the day and there was an air of optimism in camp.
Sunday
After an inauspicious warm up session, John headed out in Group 1 for the first qualifying session. The times throughout the field were extremely close, with just 1.2 seconds covering all 19 drivers in the group. John’s 47.490s lap was a disappointing half second off the pace, leaving plenty of head-scratching between sessions as to where the time was lost.
After making a couple of changes to the setup, John headed out for second qualifying and, despite setting 9 laps, could not improve his time for the first session. When the results from the two groups were combined, this was only good enough for 14th on the grid for the pre-final.
A tough getaway from the outside of the grid saw John lose a couple of places in the early laps, dropping to 17th. There were signs of encouragement from this point, however, as John established a rhythm and regained the lost positions and improved the overall pace relative to the leaders.
Grid 14 proved tricky once again in the final as John caught the tail-end of the first lap melee and was tipped into a spin. Another incident at the end the end of the lap dropped him to plumb last, so things could only get better!
John got his head down and produced some good overtaking moves to come home 19th out of the 33-strong field but it was, overall, a very disappointing weekend. Subsequent testing indicated that some of the problem could have been with the tyres, so John will be looking forward to a strong outing at Llandow.
