2013-12-09 09:17:19.2
Round 6 of the 2009 championship was held at the remote Ellough Park raceway in Suffolk. The former airfield site welcoming the drivers with hot and sunny weather. It was another mixed weekend for Eddie, who described both days as “non eventful”.
Saturday
It looked like being a strong day for Target Racing. After a kart change in practice, all drivers felt happy with the performance of the replacement. Once again the line-up was Eddie, Marc Laukam and Chris Bell.
Laukam did a great job in qualifying to line up fourth and all hopes were for a podium finish. Ala, Chris Bell was bumped down to seventh in the opening laps and it soon became evident he was struggling with the kart. The team called him in for a pit stop and he pulled straight into the mechanics bay complaining of s sticking throttle. The team managed to change their kart over in their pit stop but lost well over a lap in the process.
Eddie double stinted and, despite having a great mid-race battle with Paul Williams and Tim Hill in Galliard and Wolfie respectively, complained of severe brake problems and admitted to not feeling at all quick.
Marc Laukam did the final two stints and made the best use of the kart, averaging better times than either Bell or Hall but could not make up enough ground and so the team scored their worst result of the year.
Sunday
Prior to the race weekend, Eddie had said that he felt confident he would have a much stronger second half of the year in the sprint championship. Certainly his qualifying performance seemed to back that up. Random allocated grid slots of 5th, 13th and 9th resulted in finishing positions of 1st, 8th and 2nd to put Eddie 4th on the grid again.
Feeling less than confident about starting on the outside line and obviously nervous about having a repeat of his first corner crash at Rye, Eddie made a cautious start but still managed to hold on to fifth. He maintained this position until the penultimate lap when he was passed by the flying Richard Higham. Eddie finished in 6th to score his second best result in what has been a so far frustrating season.
Eddie summarised his weekend’s performance after the race.
“To be honest, I didn’t feel quick all weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday I felt I was losing a lot of time especially in the low speed corners. Still, it was great to be fighting near the front of the field again and I am just happy that I managed to make it round the first corner this time!”
The race was won again by Lee Kemp who is now almost assured of the championship.
