Ha! You thought I had gone. After I handed the reigns over to other members for race reporting, squat all was done, so after a lot of begging and pleading ( ;-) ) I decided to come out of retirement to start writing the reports for our great club again.

The club went to Camberley a month before the race date to get some pre-season testing done, try out different chassis, tyre compounds…we wish. People got out in some new karts, run in engines, and all went well, apart from Coddy melting his engine good an' proper. I'm sure there will be pictures of the practise up when Adam gets some time off.

The race day started the usual way with the school's mini bus turning up late. Although there were light spots of rain in the morning, and the day looked pretty grey, there was no rain (much to my delight).

Right where to start….well in class 6 there was a bet between Lee and I that my Yami engine the 'RM' would beat his Honda 'H'. It started off badly. Firstly my driver, Ben, broke his arm on a school skiing trip (knocker!). So from this day forth I am forbidding any kart club driver to go skiing the week before a race meet. So I drafted in my test driver, Chaz. His task was to beat Kit. Low and behold the class 6 curse hit my engine, and it decided not to run properly. So Kit just had to drive in one heat to win. He barely managed that. He didn't finish one heat, and only beat Chaz by 4 points. But Lee did win the bet …just ;-) .

In class 7, we saw the arrival of the first school kart with the Yamaha KT100. Graeme and his dad, Stewart, had done a fantastic job on building the kart ready for the meet (even after blowing up an engine at the practice a week before the meeting). And it looked proper pucker! Sam, Chaz and Graeme all raced during the day. Chaz unfortunately broke his king pin in the mornings practice, but got it together for the afternoons racing.

Class 8 was the best racing of the day in my opinion. With 6 karts entered, and the 2 in class 6, it meant the possibility of needing 14 pushers! That didn't happen thank God. The FF/RM didn't run, and Kit couldn't get his kart/engine together in time, hence why he 'raced' in c6 instead. JJ's engine was still pretty sick and gave up the ghost leaving him open to push his mate Jon. Jon seemed to be going ok until the last heat. It looked like he spun on the last heat, until Lee said;

"I hope he hasn't seized, he leaned his jet a bit, coz he said it was bogging".

Boy did it seize. Even I hadn't seized something that bad….actually, I have. The piston crown went AWOL, and welded up all the exhaust ports. Coddy didn't get going as his engine was a bit of a mess after the Camberley practice blow up. After we had put the rotary valve in correctly, the engine still didn't want to run. So he spent the rest of the day doing some heavy petting with 'Avril'. Jason had an excellent debut in class 8. Although he wasn't the quickest, he showed his worth by finishing every practice and heat. You could see the killer instinct as he made some nice overtaking moves. The best result in class 8 came from Matt. He was sporting his new water cooled Parilla rotary motor. Although Matt was pushed off in one heat, he finished 4th, 2nd and 2nd in the others to give him 4th overall, with Jason close behind him in 5th. So Matt retains the Class 8 trophy for now, but I have a feeling Coddy and Jason may come back stronger.

We had another 2 debutants in the form of 'Little' Joe and Becky. Little Joe finally got his license and will now be the regular driver of the No.3 Comer. Karl bought Mini JC's championship winning class 11 kart to give his daughter a head start in her racing career. She used the meeting to get her first novice practises to obtain her racing license. Unusually for us, she was the only 4 stroke club kart, as no.39 and 37 are out of action until their refurbishment is completed.

In the Raket class, Dominic had a good days racing. He was called up to the Clerk for dangerous driving. Dominic has a knack of getting called up, be it for his engine sounding "different", or driving head on into tyre walls for no reason. We all knew Dominic isn't that sort of person, but I think his Dad Stephen was more worried. Dominic looks to be improving all the time and I think has a real shot of finishing highly at this year's nationals. He finished 7th out of 14 karts. As said earlier, Ben couldn't race his spanking looking kart as he broke his arm. But Ben will be back for the Rye meet to show his worth racing in Class 6 and 14.

A good days racing in general I feel. A final note, unfortunately Dom's weekend ended in the hospital due to some injuries in a collision in the final heat, so we all wish him a speedy recovery.

Yours reportingly

Dan Marshall (esq)

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