MOTORS TV ROUNDS 8 & 9 AT LYDD

At our last Lydd visit, the TEC-MEC chassis seemed to reach a performance level and no matter how hard David Klaassen tried, he struggled to get Mike on to the front runners pace. In the final the Stub axle snapped so Mike was unable to gain many points and slid down to 13th in the National championships. He didn't want a repeat of that in Motors, so having seen how quick the JKH chassis were at the track, he borrowed a two year old one for the weekend. The weather would be very hot, but as the track had been flooded until Thursday, and then had Vega rubber on it, it was running about half a second slower than the TKM Super 1.

On Friday, he was on a par with Martyn Lyell, who currently leads the series. Martin is on a 2007 works chassis, so the team were pleased that he was instantly on the pace with the JKH. 'Ginge' from JKH said that the new chassis was at least 2/10ths quicker here and at some tracks almost 4/10ths faster than the 2005/6 model Mike was on.

On the Saturday practice, most were on new tyres, and again Mike was within a few hundreths of Lyell and Super 1 front runner Tucker, so in official qualifying it was a rewarding 3rd quickest. Starting towards the back of the grid(in this championship the fastest start at the back, but get more points for being quickest) Mike tried to keep with Lyell and Tucker, but as they slipped through the traffic, Mike was baulked by a couple of slower drivers. He eventually caught them and overtook them only to get blocked and taken out. Eventually he recovered and came in 7th out of 21 runners, saying that just 12 laps were not enough. With Lyell and Tucker, Mike was the only driver to get below 41 seconds.

On Sunday Martin Lyall was again the quickest although both David Klaassen and Martyn's dad had Mike a fraction quicker, but the official results placed the top 6 within a few hundreths. Mike could so easily have been 2nd, but recorded a 5th fastest time! Again starting from almost the last row, he was shunted down to last, but this time once the first lap had passed, he progressed steadily to gain 5th, with Lyell and Tucker just ahead. Fortunately for Mike, on both days he was faster and finished higher than current Super 1 leader Luke Caudle, who started the meeting in second and Stephen Napier who was in third place.

In the Sunday final Luke Caudle was originally black flagged and excluded for contact driving, but was included in the final places in 7th as the wrong flag was shown. It should have been the black and white warning flag, not the full black. So after all the video evidence etc, we believe that Martin Lyell now leads the championship by about 30 points from Tucker, with Mike Luke and Stephen all fighting over third place. Both Reed and MaCaulay are close enough to the top five to have an affect on the overall positions, but with just two rounds to go all Lyell has to do is to be quick and near the front on Saturday and the championship could be his.

Mike and Martin were joint points leaders after the first two rounds, but since then Martyn has driven consistently well and deserves it, while Mike had a poor couple of rounds at Rowrah and dropped about 30 points to Martyn in that weekend alone. That may well be the margin of difference when they race for the last time at Houton Park in October.

Another excellent meeting - well done to the PSC Production team for organising the event and to the scrutineers for catching out some more cheats trying to win by default. I get my information second-hand, so please check http://www.kartingtv.tv/ for more information and s the official results and tables. Next week Mike drives for England, and although he is booked to drive the TEC-MEC, I think he will be asked by Paul his team manager, to drive the JKH as it has a proven track record at Warden Law. Mike with be joined by Luke Caudle, Will Reed and Will Waterman. It is a first cap for both Caudle and Reed, but Waterman was in the Junior team with Mike last year and team race d well with Mike to help England to victory. Hopefully the Weather will be kind to us.

TKM 'o' PLATE at SHENINGTON

Despite the rain, a much better organised event than the Festival. Despite being part of a club round, there was plenty of practice on the Saturday and a couple of heats, with the third heat and final on the Sunday. We were pleased to find that there was also a clun round for TKM, so we took advantage of this and Mike was able to have a further three heats and a final on a different TEC-MEC chassis which allowed us to compare notes. In his first heat Mike finished 3rd and gained the fastest lap. In the second heat, Mike managed a top 10 finish. On Sunday, despite being in pole, his carb failed so he again just kept in the top 10. With about 50 top drivers in the TKM class, Mike was able to qualify 10th in the main final and held that position throughout in a very wet and windy climax. In the club event Mike used the Banchee chassis but with an experimental seat and a new brake system. He also used practice fuel and old tyres as his best were kept for the 'o' plate. Starting last in every heat as he was a late entry in a field of over 20, he managed to get three top ten finishes, and was in 4th for the final grid. Once again he experimented with a practice engine set to different ignition timing in the final, and the plan backfired as he slipped down to 7th. We left before the results were finalised and the trophies presented, as we feared that our race truck would be stuck in the muddy grass and wanted to get out before it became too dark and cold. Unfortunately no pictures as yet.

TKM FESTIVAL 2007

Sorry to report that this will be our last Festival. Unfortunately there was an hours delay mid-afternoon when a paramedic tripped and broke an ankle and this has a knock on effect of ruining the meeting. It was nice to see a good turnout of senior TKM drivers especially four on TEC-MEC. The class seems to be dying this year and now lack support at many of the major clubs, as the Rotax class continues to gain popularity. The best of the 100 or so TKM drivers competed over three heats for a place in the Elite final, while the remainder contested for the Festival cup. Three of the TEC-MEC drivers got into the Elite final and the other came third in the Festival cup. Unfortunately there was not enough time to run the final, just one lap being completed, so the result was based on the grid places. A baffling and complete farse in our opinion, as the eventual winner crashed out on the first bend causing the red flag. Mike had made a great start from 20th to 10th in the first lap, as he avoided the usual Kimbolton carnage. Following his victory last year, he was all set up to repeat it if he could. What a waste of a weekend and very sad as the TV company will have very little film to show on SKY later this year. Let us hope that the British Open next week is better planned so that we get a final race of the day over a decent number of laps. Not that it will affect us, but I would be suprised if this was the location in 2008.

GINETTA TEST AT ROCKINGHAM

An excellent day in new surroundings and in a Ginetta for the first time. Matt Nicholl-Jones, the 2005 series champion and current championship leader, was very impressed with Mike and his consistent laps of 1.36 during the morning session. Unfortunately the car had a gearbox problem as it wouldn't engage 3rd, so any improvement on this time in the afternoon was impossible.

Mid-afternoon, the Ginetta engineers said that the differential was also faulty, so that finished the session. Faster times were recorded in the afternoon by other drivers as the track gained grip, with the fastest being from the Panoz works driver Tom Kimber-Smith at 1.34 , which Ginetta informed us was a second faster than any other driver, but it was in the 2008 development car. Being under a second off the pace at this stage is encouraging, and prompted Matt to offer Mike a drive for the 2008 with Academy Motorsport.

Karting fixtures will be concluded in September, so the next step will be to acquire a car for winter testing.