Round 7 of the Bayford Meadows Club Championship was tough but rewarding!
After three rounds of racing in the Honda Clubman class, the decision was made to move up to Full Cadet! Possible first signs of madness.
At the last round of Bayford, James showed he had the speed to win a clubman round, with fastest lap of the final and following some analysis of the data could have gone a couple of tenths quicker.
So we planned a test day before the race meeting to trial a full cadet engine, kindly provided by Project One. The times on the day were confusing! The circuit we were now familiar with had been partially resurfaced, it was much faster. James was now running in the 52s, with his previous best time being 53.6. How much faster was the circuit, half a second, a second? How much better was the engine?
Anyway, the following week, we took the plunge and purchased a new RPM SP Honda Cadet Engine for £ 1,200 plus VAT. Ouch!
Testing on Saturday was tough and confusing as we ended up chasing the circuit. In the morning we were on the pace, only a tenth slower than Ollie Marsh in full Cadet, by the afternoon some what further off.
Qualifying – We were still not there on set-up for qualifying and 11th fastest reflected that. James was quicker than leading runners from the clubman class doing both, so it still felt like the right decision to move up.
Race 1 – James showed more speed than in Qualifying, performed some good overtaking and finished 8th.
Race 2 – We tried some setup changes to try and recapture the speed from testing, but they didn’t work entirely and together with a silly mistake by James going for 7th, left him 12th out of 18 at the flag.
Race 3 – Grand Final.
More setup tweeks, now finally rocking! Race pace was really good, fastest lap only a couple hundredths off the winners fastest lap (Ollie Marsh 52.457, James 52.500) briefly up to 6th with a solid finish of 8th. Got another trophy for being top novice (2 more races and he won’t be a novice anymore), so he better start winning soon!
Could have finished 4th if we had sorted the kart sooner. The engine also needs more hours on it and should be quicker for the next round at the end of September.
