Comeback kings!
October 2009 |
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It was quite the dominant display for Foy, Williams and Hall who took pole position ahead of championship challengers the KOKS. Teamcraft were again looking to be well on the pace in third with Drive Fast Don’t Crash well up there in fourth and running stand-in Nick Williams for the second race running while Dave Vaughton continues to recover from his whiplash injury. The KOK’s main rivals, Auditing Armageddon were down in ninth but fairing better than Team Pikey Racing and Alpha who were much further down the order than expected. Having missed the last two races, it was good to see the Wing Nuts back, although they could manage no better than 24th on the grid.
Tom Foy from the Ginsters was delighted with his team’s performance in qualifying and was exuding confidence before the start.
“It’s good to be back and great to be so far up the front. Historically we have made things difficult for ourselves during the race it’s true but hopefully we will have a clean race today and being at the front will certainly help our course. I feel good and hopefully we can deliver.”
The front two got away well. Teamcraft dropped from third to seventh on the opening lap after Henry Jones received a nudge from behind but amazingly everyone managed to make it round the first lap without major incident.
As the Ginsters pulled away up front, Drive Fast Don’t Crash took second from the KOKS going into the boot but made contact on lap 3 and picking up a black flag. This promoted Rum Racing into second. The KOKS would do themselves no favours with a black flag for and giving Auditing Armageddon something to smile about. A sheepish Rob Williams gave his view of his black flag during the race but tried to put a brave face on it.
“I just over-committed into the corner and I accidentally hit someone. We’ve still got most of the race to go and we’re just getting our mistakes out of the way at the beginning and the rest of the race will just fall into place.”
Alpha Kenny Body were in for a long afternoon. Another team under the guidance for Rich “Bernie” Higham, they appeared to be struggling from the outset. Higham:
“It is visibly slow on the straights. I’ve seen Tom overtake someone in the first section of corners, pull two lengths on them and then lose it all on the straight. They have got such a bad top-end kart and they are going to struggle all day. The black flag didn’t help either.”
Lucid Initiatives were having their most competitive showing since the start of the season and were even challenging the Ginsters for the win at one point. Clive Morphett, in possibly his last race of the season, gave his views during the race.
“It’s good to be back on form. We’ve got our usual team back today after Llandow and we’re holding station at the moment. We’ve had a lot of bad luck this year which has put paid to everything. We’ll be back strong next year but let’s see how today goes.”
By quarter distance and as the second fuel window opened, we were starting to get a clearer picture of the true pace setters. The Ginsters were in a class of their own ahead of the back on form Lucid Initiatives. Teamcraft were third and both were looking good for a podium. However, a few small incidents from Teamcraft would once again cost them dearly and a bizarre incident for Lucid Initiatives in their penultimate pit stop when they fell over the throttle cable in the pits and snapped it would drop them right to the back and cost them a certain podium place.
Having not fancied being part of the anal testing, the Pikey’s decided not to get their equipment checked out and suffered in qualifying as a result. Taking a calculated risk, they chose to swap their kart prior to the start and started at the back of the grid. The gamble may very well have paid off but a coming together with a Wing Nut later in the race would end their forward progress and leave them picking up the minor points.
Another team in trouble was Rum Racing. Having had a good start to their day and running well up near the front, they would also succumb to the black flag. A trip into Woodchip corner later in the race ended their day completely.
As usual, Teamcraft were looking on course for a podium and as usual acting team manager and strategic genius Rich Higham spoiled their race by using the now infamous phrase “you’ve got this one in the bag boys!” A mistakenly given black flag and another collision with another driver left them having to fight their way from the back again.
This paved the way for the KOKS to pull out their now customary recovery drive and they duly got past Auditing Armageddon to secure the final step on the podium behind MoFoCo and eventual winners the Ginsters who won by almost an entire lap.
The Ginster boys were delighted with their comeback drive and to secure their first Inters win.
“It is an absolutely fantastic way to come back and to win it by almost a lap was just great. We didn’t have any problems in the race but we nearly got taken off twice with some rookies being a bit over-eager going into some corners but we managed to keep it on the track so no problems really.”
With only two races to go, the championship is looking extremely close between the KOKS and Auditing Armageddon and will go down to the wire.
