2013-12-09 09:17:19.2
A second place finish, described by Sprint Racing legend Steve Dart as a ‘Championship Performance’ extended Eddie’s lead in the championship to 11 points. This performance was made all the better after the disastrous result in the endurance race the day before where 3Cubed suffered with a number of problems to finish way down the order.
Saturday
The team knew they were in for a long day before practice started when Eddie noticed that the chassis appeared to be bent in the pits. Ian was first out in practice and was out for nearly 10 minutes before bringing the kart in to be tested. It was immediately taken in to the garage and the team had to get into a spare kart. John Emerson took it out for another 10 minutes before bringing it in again complaining of a lack of bottom-end. The team then had to wait an unusually long time for the kart to be tested, which meant that Eddie missed practice completely.
Deciding to send him out to qualify to give him his running time, Eddie did a superb job to qualify 12th but was not at all pleased with the performance of the kart.
Despite making a good start, the performance of the kart soon became apparent and Eddie soon slipped down the order. The team had decided to double stint all 3 drivers but this strategy proved to be of no use due to the handling difficulties. Accident damage and a further spin in John Emerson’s heat only compounded the teams.
”All in all it was a bit of a cock-up really. The kart we were given for the race was ‘in tolerance’ so there as nothing we could do about that. The tyre pressure was too high and they overheated and it became impossible to handle. There was a distinct lack of bottom-end power as well but a few other teams seemed to be complaining about that too. The guys adjusted the pressures when John had his accident, which seemed to improve the handling but it wasn’t much help by then.
“I think we’re all a bit frustrated really. We seem to have suffered a bit over the last couple of races but we need to take some of the responsibility. We didn’t do a good enough job in practice in getting things sorted early enough which cost us too much time.”
Sunday
Eddie came into this race with a narrow 3 point lead over Guy Holliday in the championship and hoping for a return to the podium after a relatively disappointing 6th at Lydd.
Qualifying was almost an exact repeat of Lydd with Eddie running away with the win in his first heat and scoring an impressive, albeit disappointed 3rd in his second heat. Starting from 20th in his final heat saw him finish only 11th after getting held up behind slower karts in the early stages.
Eddie was relatively happy with fourth on the grid for the A final but was less than happy with Vince Bond in his second heat, who almost took Eddie out of the race.
The loss of second place in that heat meant that Eddie started on the outside of the grid for the final. Inevitably, he lost out at the start and dropped to six at the first corner. He nevertheless clawed his way back up to fourth an held station behind the battling trio of Parveer Nijjar, James Akehurst and Andrew Capaldi. On the final lap, capaldi and Nijjar ran wide coming out of the third hairpin and Eddie took the initiative and dived through to take second with half a lap to go. He immediately closed the gap to Akehurst but had no time left to make a move and finished a second shy at the chequered flag. Eddie was understandably delighted after the race.
“If the last 3 seasons of Endurance racing has taught me anything it is patience. I tried a few passes earlier in the race but it all got a bit fraught so I just held back and bided my time. I stayed just close enough to take advantage if anything happened and sure enough they ran each other wide and I nipped through.
“I needed a good result here and I said before the race that I needed a podium and also to finish ahead of my main rivals so that’s job done really. I’m happy for James. He drove really well and deserved the win. It’s good to see Josh Hill on the podium too. He’s obviously got the pedigree behind him and he’s also a really nice guy.”
With the championship heading for the halfway mark, Eddie insists that he is still trying not to think about the championship.
”We’ve still got 6 races left and anything can happen yet. I’m still just taking each race as it comes.”
