2013-12-09 09:17:19.2
3Cubed suffered a poor day in the O Plate Championship at Whilton Mill yesterday, finishing way down in 11th position after a number of incidents hampered their day.
The format was 3 individual sprints and two one hour team endurance races. John was taken out at turn 1 in his sprint race and both Ian Wilson and Eddie seemed to struggle in their respective sprints and neither of them finished in the top 10.
“I was pretty pissed off at my performance in the first heat. I struggled with the low grip and seemed to take for ever to get on the pace on the new layout. It’s really frustrating because I’m normally pretty quick at learning new circuits.”
The first of the endurance races was much better, with the team finishing the hour in a very competitive 4th position, having started 11th on the grid.
“I was much happier with my stint in the first enduro race. The track had rubbered in a bit more by this stage and our kart was handling more to my liking. The only downside in my opinion is that this was the only race in the day where I didn’t have the onboard camera on!”
The final race of the day started well with Eddie lining up fourth on the grid. Although losing a handful of places off the line when he was squeezed on the grass, he nevertheless managed to keep up with the leaders in front. Unfortunately, the group of karts in front tangled with a backmarker at turn 2 and Eddie got caught up in the incident.
“Apart from the obvious disappointment of getting involved in someone else’s accident, it also aggravated my rib injury and I am in severe pain. Because of the discomfort, I didn’t drive very well for the remainder of my race because the pain was obviously sapping a lot of my focus.”
Despite the disappointment of the incident, Eddie was philosophical about events.
“Unfortunately, this is the sort of things that happens when you mix Premier, Intermediate and Rookie teams together. From what I could see, and looking at the replay, I think the guy being lapped was typical of a lot of rookie drivers and just didn’t understand the concept of moving out of the way when the leaders are coming through. Instead it looks as if he moved to the right to block, got tagged and spun the other guys round on the outside. I was already in the braking zone and had a split second to decide whether to go low or high. Knowing that most of them had spun on the outside and the guy who caused it was more likely to roll backwards, I went to the inside. Sadly he didn’t roll backwards and I was already going to quick anyway and hit him – end of race!”
The incident proved to be irrelevant anyway. The team were already suffering with overheating brakes by this stage and then in Ian’s final stint, the drive chain snapped and they had to jump in a spare kart, eventually finishing way down in 28th position.
The combined results left the team 11th overall in what was a disappointing day.
“While it wasn’t a particularly great race, at least it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. This isn’t a race that counts towards the championship and at least we got some practice on the new layout before the important races.”
