Endurance Karting

Round 4 2009 – Dubbo 4 + 5

Round 4 saw the TEKA outfit travel to Lincoln County Raceway in Dubbo for a double header weekend. Saturday was practice followed by qualifying then a 4 hour race in the afternoon. We decided to leave the kart setup as it was for Canberra, this proved to be a good call and the kart was quick from the start on tyres that had over 10 hours wear. Practice went with out any problems and the kart and all 4 drivers put in some good lap times.

Qualifying was split into 2 x 10 minute sessions with the best lap time from each driver combined to give the starting grid position. Rob went out first for his 10 minute session and managed a respectable time of 58:49. I went out next with my best lap being a 58:95. The combined time of 1:57.44 put us 9th on the grid and 1st of the B graders. This was our best qualifying result so far. We were rapted!

Qualified: 1st B Grade (9th overall)

Saturday Race 1: 4 hours

Eric started race 1 and we put the pressure on him to stay at the pointy end of the B graders. He did a great job in his first stint but 2 of the B grade teams (Dodgy Boys and Sky Racing) obviously found some speed as they both managed to catch and pass Eric. This put us in 3rd place for B grade and that is how it stayed throughout the 4 hours. All 4 drivers drove really well and the kart was good, not great but good. We all agreed that the kart did not feel as good as it was at Canberra or in practice but we still managed to come 3rd in B grade (our best finish so far) and 11th outright.

Race 1 Result: 3rd B Grade (11th outright)

Sunday Race 2: 5 Hours

I made the call before the race to adjust the tyre pressures from the previous race. With the track wet from the previous night’s rain and the cold conditions I made the call to increase the pressure up to 23psi in the front and 27psi in the back. This definitely helped with the kart setup and it felt easier to drive and corner exit speed was noticeably quicker from that of race 1.

Chris started the race on a drying track and did a fantastic job to stay out of trouble in greasy conditions. Once again all 4 drivers went really well and the kart felt much better to drive than it did in race 1 (at least I thought so). The problem was that other teams also found improvements from race 1 and we found ourselves a lap done from our nearest B grade rivals and running in 5th position in B grade, 9th outright. Why was this happening?

Unfortunately we seemed to loose most of our time in the pit stops, as Eric pointed out, we were on average 9 seconds slower in our pit stops than our closet rivals. Over 7 pit stops that is a lap down. Something we will have to work on in the future.

At the end of 5 hours and with nothing going wrong for a change we managed a very creditable 5th in B grade and 9th outright. Our speed was good but we were noticeably slower than some teams that we have been quicker than in the past. Something that we need to look into, either kart setup or down on engine power, either way we will be working hard to get back up to the pace of the top 4 B grade teams.

With a combined points tally from Race 1 and Race 2 we finished 4th in B grade (only 2 points of 3rd) and 12th outright. This puts us 5th overall in the points tally for 2009.

So once again we missed out on a podium finish but that just makes us more determined for future races. Some of the team were very happy with the result while some of the others (me) felt a little disappointed, I guess that is racing!

Race 2 Result: 5th B Grade (9th outright) Combined Result: 4th B Grade (12th Outright)

Congratulations to all the winners and all the teams that competed at Dubbo for the good clean racing, it was a great weekend. Gil

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