Today was round four of the BMKR Rotax 2023 Summer Championship. As always Saturday was a test day and Sunday is race day. We headed down to the circuit Friday evening after a very successful weekend at Lydd.
Saturday went well and as we adjusted set-up the kart ended the day feeling fast and Jacob was looking forward to seeing what he could do on Sunday.
Sunday prep was exactly the same as normal, 07:30 and the kart is out and being set-up ready before driver briefing and sitting there patiently for qualifying. Unfortunately while checking the kart was race ready we noticed a crack on the chassis but there was very little we could do before qualifying.
Qualifying started and of whatever reason the pace wasn’t there for us and the best we could do was 6th. When we were back in the paddock we realised that the chassis had snapped and this explained why the kart had no front-end grip. We tried to get one of the teams to weld it for us but had no joy before the first heat, so we made a temporary fix and headed off to the first heat.
The kart was un-drivable and Jacob just went backwards loosing place after place. Luckily for him there was a crash ahead of him so he managed to claw a few positions back and finish the 1st pre-final in 6th position.
We made it onto the grid for the 2nd race, still with a damaged kart, at one point it was touch and go as to whether we would start at-all but we thought we would give it a go anyway. In hind-sight it was pointless as the kart just wasn’t drivable and we wended up finishing in 9th position.
A massive thank you to Roalf Racing who managed to weld our chassis after the 2nd pre-final so we were hopeful of a better result in the final.
We started the grand final in 9th position, made a solid start and Jacob drove well to get some brilliant over-takes in to finish the final in 7th.
Not a brilliant weekend but we didn’t give up and walked away with points helping us retain our 5th position in the championship.
