The final race of the 2006 season !
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP, ROUND 7 AT BIRA !
The Thailand National Championship round 7 will be the last race for this exiting kart season. Originally planned for the Seacon Circuit in Bangkok, this event has now been moved to Bira as conditions at Seacon has become “too bumpy” for kart racing. The layout is expected to be similar to that of Round 6. Most class championship battles are by now settled, so this will be a race for fun, for glory of the day, for the season finale – so do come and enjoy this race weekend !
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The Extreme Sports Cafe Racing team will be there competing, and also setting up our new chasis for next year, which will debut at this race, without the 2007 livery… This is a good opportunity to try some things out in a competitive environment, but with no real risk to our championship standings..
As we entered the championship too late to mount a serious challenge, and with a fledgling team, we are very happy with our consistency, and 9th position (out of 27) currently in the 2006 standings.
We will be pushing to improve that this weekend, whilst having some end of season fun..
Next year with our new sponsors, new ItalKart chasis, and livery we will mount our first challenge for a top three finish in the 2007 Thailand National Karting Championship Clubman Class.
Thanks to Thomas at ItalKart for this help this year, and to the rest of the team - Pui, Julia and Stephen.
Round 6 report…
Round 6 was a great experience, albeit painfull for Stephen.. The layout of the Bira track was very technical and had many tight right hand turns.. Not good for our driver who still has rib damage on his left side! We used the first day to run in our rebuilt engine (which we blew in Round 5) and were not far off the lap pace in the final stages of running our engine in!
On our first day of practice we were qualifying on the pace at around 56 seconds a lap. All day Saturday we fine tuned the kart, and let Stephen explore the track (and some of the barriers too!).
We even had some practice sessions in the wet, with Stephen (and a few others) opting to stay out on slicks and try their skills.. No dramas there.. But where were the rest of the Clubman class?! :p
Stephen is still suffering from his ongoing rib injury ( and looking forward to a few months over season break to let that settle down). On his out lap for qualifying (Saturday PM) he took the long sweeping right hand flat out on new tyres and immediately slowed in pain… Stephen regrouped and pushed as hard as he could but was only able to get slow times in the 1m06s, so came in.. In fact his quickest lap was his first (59s), after the warm up..
Troubled by the rib for the race day now, Stephen did the best he could in the heats but wanted to save his efforts for the final race, and was satisfied to start from low down on the grid… Every lap on the track ws aggravating his ribs, and wearing tolerance away like a bad ‘copy’ clutch plate!
On that subject, the IAME engine situation at the moment is terrible, with a glut of sub-standard, quick wearing plates kicking around which will barely do 1 session! (Something needs to be done about that, as team drinking funds are being affected by clutch purchases!)
In the final race we had a very exciting challenge.. For the first few laps we were in the top 4 or 5 karts, after some great first corner work from Stephen got him away from the pack, briefly. Soon we were being challenged hard from behind as Stephen found it harder and harder to keep the same pace… Defending for several laps, but slowing gradually each lap, Stephen let them past eventually…
Battling to the end, and relying on our team credo for these formative years ( which is - “Reliability wins Championships”) we managed to pull an 8th place and have a very exciting race.. Great fun!
Looking forward to the 2007 season…. and don’t forget the race at Bira this coming weekend..
