Brake troubles slow John at Clay - 31.05.2009

Easykart: Round 3 at Clay Pigeon Raceway, Dorset

Saturday

Round 3 of the 2009 Easykart Championship at Clay Pigeon saw John returning to the scene of his debut Super 1 win last year and, after just missing a podium at the final corner last time out at Llandow, there was good deal of optimism for a strong result.

Early signs on Saturday looked good, as John maintained front-running pace through practice, despite struggling with what is turning out to be perpetual oversteer. Some of this could be explained by the lack of fresh tyres or the very high track temperatures, but it’s certainly a recurring issue.

Sunday

The new tyres for qualifying were unfortunately not the magic fix for John that it seemed to be for some of his competitors. With the outcome of the weekend heavily dictated by the handful of laps in qualifying it’s crucial that everything comes together for the session. John’s time was enough to put him just in the top 10, but the final piece of the puzzle was proving elusive.

Qualifying on the outside of the grid always provides challenge away from the lights and, at the start of the pre-final, John found himself bundled down to 14th with work to do. Battling hard against other drivers and even his own unbalanced chassis, he was able to claw his way back into the top 10 and continue the rise up to 7th by the checkered flag.

It was after the race that a problem with the brake system was discovered, with it binding on and sapping power down the straights. A frantic interval between races was spent finding a solution with the help of pole-sitter Adrian Crockett, leaving no time to address the troublesome handling issues.

With work halted by the impending final, John set off on the warm up lap and was alarmed to find that rather than too much stopping power, he was now faced with too little. A quick rethink on driving style was required and John began to flick the kart sideways on corner entry in order to scrub off the necessary speed. Excellent for flamboyance, but extremely unhelpful in terms of lap times and chronic oversteer.

Despite the troubles John made a particularly brave start and found himself in 5th in the early stages and closing in on 4th. It wasn’t to last however, as the lack of brakes and tail-happy driving became too much of a problem to solve with just opposite-lock and optimism.

With maximum effort right to the finish John managed to hang on for 8th place, but it was another case of opportunity lost. The speed is there but the problems with qualifying and handling will need to be solved in order to turn solid top 10 results into podiums. There’s room for improvement before the next round at Teesside!