It’s the 5th round of the BMKR summer championship and our results at this circuit have been improving throughout the season. We had our first podium only two races ago so we were hopeful of a good result.
The week before we were testing at PFI circuit in a mid-week test. Without realising it at the time we had sustained damage their when we had a couple of moments running wide over some of their curbs.
In the Saturday practice we were off the pace and the kart didn’t have any grip. After lots of set-up changes and kart tweaking we noticed while laser aligning it that our chassis wasn’t straight. GMS Team kindly jigged our kart Saturday evening and after we checked all the other alignments were straight we were hopeful for Sundays race meeting.
For the first three laps in qualifying we were on pace and then suddenly the kart was scraping on the floor and limping back to the pits. Our qualifying session was over and our chassis had broken.
With the help of a welder we managed to get the frame re-welded, however this was a temporary fix to try to get us out for the first race, it was no way an ideal solution, nor was it going to make our race weekend easy. The part of the chassis that failed was beyond repair.
With 2 mins left we got the kart put back together but had to set up the caster and camber to completely opposite settings just to get it off the floor and reasonably straight. We had no grip, the kart was very un-balanced and we were simply just taking part, we could in no-way race. We lucked out on finishing positions due to other drivers receiving penalties.
We headed into the final very demoralised and wanting the weekend to just finish. The kart was un-drivable and we simply were slipping down the grid. We finished the race in 10th. The only advantage to running was that we were able to collect points for the weekend to keep us in the championship.
This was defiantly a weekend to forget and the end of a chapter as we knew this would be the last running of our first race chassis (JHR-01) and already we were planning what we need to do and how quickly can we do it, to make sure we are race ready as soon as possible.
I have to say, Jacob kept his head throughout this nightmare and did the best he could in very difficult circumstance and a completely underivable kart.
