Race Report EasyKart Round 3 – Clay Pigeon

Round 3 of this year’s Easykart championship was held at our local circuit, the ultra-fast Clay Pigeon Raceway in Dorset.  We have had two years of bad luck in the past in Cadet class at this venue despite it being our home track.  However, Bailey has shown some real front running pace here during testing this year and we were both very hopeful of a positive and strong result, how wrong we were!

During our previous test, we noticed the brakes were not performing very well and Bailey was having to brake far too early to make the corners so we shimmed the pads, and so begins the problems that lead to new replacement pads for testing on Saturday.

During testing on Saturday, Bailey was unhappy with the braking on his EasyKart and we lost most of the day due to trouble with these pesky brakes.  Bailey was over driving and getting more frustrated as the day wore on and we were 1.5 seconds off his normal Clay pace. We chased setup all day before discovering that the new pads were not sitting right (thanks to Mikey/Platform Racing) we opted to replace the entire braking system end to end with the posh self-adjusting version, I sold my third kidney as needs must. However, with no time left to test this on the Saturday, Bailey would have to bed these in on Sunday morning warm-up, not ideal and we are on the back foot again for Sunday before we even started.

Bailey was in a much better frame of mind come Sunday, despite the problems we both knew that if the cards fell in our favour we could still pull a good result out of the hat.  Warm-up went badly, the new brake pads and disk didn’t really bed in well in the short 5 minutes we had during warm up so we headed to qualifying unsure of what to expect.

Qualifying went badly, 18th was all we could manage which was hard to take because the fastest time from the pole sitter was slower than we had managed a few weeks ago on older rubber, gutted.  Mickey (thanks again) then helped out again with the brakes, the pads had glazed over so a quick rub down was required before heading into the heats.

Starting 18th was not what we expected this weekend but Bailey got his head down and started well, pushing forwards quite nicely.  I could see he now had full confidence in the brakes again and he was performing well in the big stop after billy blind, making some very nice overtakes.  Early into the race disaster struck, Bailey clipped a slow moving kart that was having engine issues on the exit of the esses,  his kart was sent into the air, my heart stopped as he came crashing down on to the track hard, his session was over.  Fearful that my boy was hurt I run (yes I run sometimes) back up to the pits to check on my boy.  In obvious pain we waited for the circuit medics to give him the once over, Bailey was sore and a bit battered but not beaten yet. The kart was quite badly damaged but my only concern at this point was the safety and wellbeing of my star driver.

Bailey dusted himself off and stated that he was going out in the next session so our attention then turned to the damaged kart.  ACR (thanks pete) managed to straighten up the chassis and Barny made good use of a hammer to straight-up up the rear axle.  We checked the rest of the kart and prepared for the pre-finial, Bailey would have to start last.

Any ideas I had that the crash would slow him up quickly diminished.  The pre-finial was upon us and Bailey was on fire for the whole session, moving up from last (27th) to 16th before more troubles occurred in the form of a black flag for an unsafe kart.  The chain guard had come off during the race, this is a black flag that Bailey didn’t deserve but rules are rules and this was 100% down to me, I felt so bad knowing this.  I was at fault and yet again Bailey would have to start last due to no fault of his own, motorsport can be so cruel.

Bailey raced his heart out in the finial, moving forwards again, and finishing 17th. This is such a bitter reward for such a hard days racing.  After the racing was complete we discovered Bailey had been masking the fact that his chest was hurting, he was actually in a lot of pain.  We got him home and then headed straight to A&E.  4 Hours later we are told he has cracked a rib (or two), this most likely happened during the big shunt in the heats; Bailey continues to live up to his name, Psycho!  

Ultimately a disappointing weekend but Bailey yet again displayed a real skill with some of his brave and fearless overtaking moves, the move into the blind sticks in my mind as something quite special to witness.  It was really nice to have some extra support from Belinda, Scoop, Mark and Sally this weekend and I know Bailey was glad to have these guys here watching him do his thing, thanks guys!  

Better luck at round 4 and fingers crossed his ribs heal in time for a better weekend in Wales next month.