The Thai National Kart Championship, Round 4 in Klaeng, Rayong attracted a total of 78 entrants, a new record for this location. The Saturday practice and qualifying was run on a nice and sunny track, whereas overnight for Sundays race it was rain, rain and yet more rain. Varying levels of rain, from slight drizzle to torrential downpours, required the racers to prove their capabilities under all conditions. The Comers above soldiered through the above deluge unaffected on their slick tires. Brave, tough and enduring – they must be! The final heats of the day was again on a drying and eventually a fully dry, although somewhat green track. Praise all around for the Klaeng track, nice location and a really enjoyable track to race.
Opening Ceremony. We can see Stephen at the back right in the New Extreme Sports Cafe Racing suit.
Still nursing a broken rib we had major problems on the first day of Practice.. In fact we almost pulled out of the race weekend as Stephen could only manage 6 laps at a time before coming back to the pits in severe pain.
The Klaeng track was very reminiscent of Strubby in Linconshire, UK where Stephen cut his teeth as a racing driver over 20 years ago… By the end of Friday practice we had the kart set up and were doing 46.5 second laps, still about 2 seconds off the pace, but 3 seconds faster than the first outing of that day.
Puy, our new mechanic worked fevereshly with Stephen to get the kart more competative and spot weak points in Stephen`s racing lines..
On Saturday we were able to pull another second and a half out of lap times and bring us within half a second of the pack in qualifying last thing on Saturday, before retiring from the session with a blown manifold and a burnt out clutch.
Sunday morning an aborted attempt to change engines over (rather than change the clutch)lost us the morning practice session, and in the first heat a damaged sprocket left Stephen without a chain on the back straight. The first sesson was very wet so the kart setup was not perfect either because of the rushed changeover from dry to wet setup!
The second qualifying session was also on a very wet track with a drying racing line. A massive crash at the first corner, which Stephen managed to pick his way through left him in the mid-field for the final that afternoon. Lots of spins and hard racing made for a great heat. Stephen also manged to christen his new suit when a kart spun infront of him and shared a lot of the track`s grass borders with following karts!
In the final Stephen was holding his own in the mid-field on a dry track when in the closing laps a carburetor problem lost us power at about 13,500 revs on the back straight twice and on the main start-finish straight once, allowing challengers to get past the Extreme Sports Cafe Kart.
We set our fastest lap to date in the final at just a hair above 45 seconds. A great move forwards in Extreme Sports Cafe Racing`s second outing this year, and earned the team a well earned 6 points.
Extreme Sports Cafe Racing is now the highest ranking ItalKart Chasis team in the Clubman class, and also lying mid-field in the Championship… (Joint 11th out of 25)
The whole team are really looking forward to the 5th Round of the Thai National Kart Championship in mid-August.
*Thanks also to Thomas Raldorf for some last minute adjustments to the kart before the final race which certainly aided with our race efffort…
Up to date 2006 Results here..
UBC television times coming soon…
Video of the race here….
Click to Show/Hide Media Content: ClubmanThaiNationalKartChampionshipJuly2006 or Download File.Extreme Sports Cafe Racing now has a full complement of equipment both for the pit, and a spare engine, as well as several more hours of experience on another Thai track.. It is looking good for next season and our hopes are to to bid for a place in the top three in the Championship.
Interested Sponsors should contact stephen [AT] extremesportscafe [DOT] com.
Sponsor info, as well as race team news will also be on this Extreme Sports Cafe Racing web-site in the next few weeks…
