Race Report - Friday 26th October 2007
October. The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. As the days shorten, nature slowly prepares for the bleaker conditions of winter. The weather is cooler, and early-morning frosts prompt reluctant thoughts of the ice and snow to come. The lush green foliage of summer turns to red and gold, and wildlife gorges on fruit and berries ready for the lean days ahead. Yeah right. Whatever. The drivers preparing for Round 5 had plenty to think about, and you can be sure that none of them were worrying about the colour of the flippin’ leaves. For some, anticipation of two race starts from a 26-kart grid was enough to cause a shiver of excitement. For others, however, there was the very real prospect of a lofty place in the championship table by the time the morning was over. In the event, it was a meeting to savour – the season ended with two drivers separated by a single point at the top of the championship table, and a third scoring a superb double win. |
With 2007 being the first season to be advertised from the outset as a championship, the issue was foremost in a good many minds. At the start of the season, the championship lead had changed hands three times in as many races. Initially held by Tim McDermott after round 1, it had then gone to bmi’s Keith Jarvis (after a masterful display in the wet in Round 2), before Virgin Atlantic’s Julian Berry took a 4-point lead, thanks to a dominant Round 3 performance and associated 100-point maximum score. Round 4 saw Julian win again with a 95-pointer, but this only stretched his advantage to 7 points ahead of his nearest rival. Comfortable enough perhaps, but not an enormous lead. But suddenly, with the title apparently Julian’s to lose, it looked initially as though he would not be able to make it to round 5. |
As the news spread that Julian’s roster showed him in-flight from some far-flung destination on race day, many folk studied the championship permutations with renewed interest, and Julian went headlong into roster-swap mode. The days went by and the grid filled, and some began to believe that he really might miss the season finale. And then, with barely a week to go, an email came through; “Got a swap, cheque’s in the post.” True to his word, it was there on the doormat next morning. It’s a measure of Julian’s standing as a driver within our small-but-growing community that this revelation was greeted with an outpouring of imaginative means by which he might be ruled-out of the last race. Top marks must go to the chap who suggested disqualification on the grounds that Julian’s trainers could be regarded as ‘moveable aerodynamic devices’. Race Report Continues below... |
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2008 Season Planning The last race in the hectic 5-meeting calendar for 2007 was a complete sell out, with 26 karts on grid. Our attentions now turn to 2008 and planning the dates for the second season of the AirlineKarting.com Championship are shown left. Even if you're not sure you can attend, click on Contact Us to the left to let us know you're interested. |
Bring a friend along There's more to an Airline Karting meeting than just driving. Almost all the circuit can be seen from the decking in front of the clubhouse, and spectators can walk down the side of the circuit for a better view of the infamous Turn 1. The Clubhouse sells a range of snacks and hot and cold drinks, and don't forget the traditional 'Pie & Pint' after the race at the Wheatsheaf Pub overlooking Esher Green. |
Daytona Sandown Park 900m outdoor circuit. Twin-engined Pro-Karts. 24 pumped-up drivers formed up on the grid. The lights go out...
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Race Report continues... Similarly, the suggestion that we might gain some advantage by heating his fuel was, after some debate, discarded on the grounds that it was stupid (although given that Big Ron had seen fit to protest the likes of Williams on the grounds of fuel temperature, it was probably worth a try…). Joking aside, however, many commented that his points lead was actually relatively small, and there were some very quick drivers snapping at his heels. Julian really needed to be there to take points from these guys. And so race day dawned. Driving up from a grey but generally dry Sussex, the road surfaces became noticeably damper as the miles went by. At the circuit, grey but dry had been exchanged for grey, cold and decidedly damp. Nice weather for ducks…. and possibly Keith Jarvis. Out on the circuit, the track was still wet from Thursday’s drizzle. The Indy circuit had been in use since 9am by several sessions of Hamilton-wannabe Juniors, but in the gloomy, overcast conditions of raceday morning, it was unclear whether they had been able to get a dry line going. Oh well, time for the grown-ups to show them how to do it! Sign-in, suit-up, brief, lucky-dip. Walking across the pitlane to the waiting karts, all surfaces were still decidedly wet. Here and there stood small, cold puddles. Summer seemed a long time ago. |
In the kart, the comforting rumble of the idling engines, and the faint suggestion of heat seeping through the back of the seat were soothing, and it occurred to some that summer had been a long time ago… in 2006, to be precise. So much for global warming. Chocks away, visors down and out onto the track for practice. It was immediately apparent that the Juniors might as well not have been there for all the difference they had made to the track surface; the dark, shiny tarmac was slippery pretty-much everywhere. Folk busied themselves with the all-important tasks of discovering where, if anywhere, there was grip to be had, and how much grunt their individual machines possessed. For ten minutes, the process of twitching and sliding around the circuit went on, but as the chequered flag came out, the track surface was as frustratingly slippery as it had been at the start. Numerous spins and collisions were reported, the kart of easyJet’s Kevin Cracknell being one of many to see combat. “I spun at the exit of Turn 1,” he reported afterwards, “and got hit so hard I thought we were going to merge karts! I’ll be billing them for the damage to my underpants…” Kevin was not Turn 1’s first victim of the day, and ‘The Big Corner’ would take many more scalps before the hour was out. It was, it appeared, going to be another of those races |
Amazingly, two of the Championship protagonists had pulled the lowest numbers in the pre-start lucky dip, giving the front end of the race 1 grid a particularly steely-eyed, square-jawed look. On pole was championship leader Julian Berry, with bmi’s Keith Jarvis, second in the title race and proven rainmeister alongside him. Turn 1 was going to be very interesting. The marshals called the first karts down from the back straight to the start line, and the grid began to form-up. In the sales office portakabin, the Daytona sales team downed headsets and gathered at the windows ready for the start – a 26-strong grid getting away together was going to be a spectacle not to be missed. Outside, karts proceeded one-by-one through the turn 6-7-8 ‘stadium section’. For those at the front in particular, the forming-up process seemed to take an eternity. As the seconds ticked by, the two columns of karts grew and yet still there were more waiting on the top straight. Finally, number 26 wound its way through the 6-7-8 complex, onto the main straight and into position at the back of the left column. Marshals ran down the lines making final checks. |
This was it.
No more waiting.
Crunch time.
Race 1, Lap 1, Turn 1, all on best behavior...
Lap 2, getting confident...
but Mark Perry (4) runs out of grip and is off the circuit. Or is he just having a breather?
Green lights. The pack roared off the grid as one, the two neat lines dissolving into a furious, random mass, weaving and jinking. At the front, it was immediately clear that neither Keith nor Julian would be taking chances in the first few moments; Julian was holding his place, resolutely keeping to the right-hand side for the inside line to Turn 1, Keith just over his left shoulder. Immediately behind, Rein Zwolsman (EZY), bmi’s Mark Perry and Clare Jarvis were holding on. In close formation they surged down to turn 1, all on the right-hand side of the track for a defensive line into the corner. Just behind, unexpected development no.1 was taking form; easyJet’s Mike Wood had been pleasantly surprised at his kart’s performance off the line and, exploiting the clear left-hand side of the track, he moved up from sixth to third in the run down to Turn 1. |
Entering the Big Corner, Mike was just behind KJ but both front row men were hugging the inside of the corner, and the rest of the track was clear. Keeping to the centre, Mike twitched and slithered his way around the outside of both and into the lead, scarcely able to believe his luck. Further back, the predictable Turn 1 midfield carnage was unfolding, some losing out but others taking the opportunity to make early advances. Already on the move were Justin Undery, Richard Weber and Nick Pascoe from ninth, 14th and 21st respectively. And if there was plenty of talent at the front of the grid, there was just as much at the back; from grid spots 24-26, Roberto Gaitanis (bmi, back after a long absence), Perry Musty (BA) and Kevin Cracknell (easyJet) would be a triumvirate to reckon with. |
Perry in particular was making huge early gains. Having weighed his options on the start line, and decided the omens were not especially promising, Perry had mentally snuggled down for a long pedestrian trudge up the field. Everything changed in Turn 1. Post–race analysis showed that he was comfortably quicker than anyone else in race 1, his best tour being a 1:06.736 on lap 17….over 0.4s swifter than the next-fastest driver. He made up ten places on the first lap and more on the second, before the karts began to spread out and his victory rate reduced to one per lap until lap 8. Now in sixth, he was nevertheless a long way behind the leaders and had to bide his time and reel-off a steady string of quick laps. Eventually, fifth place became his and fourth quickly followed. |
Unfortunately we can't see the kart number to shame this spinner at the exit of Turn 1... but he wasn't alone.
Tantalized now by the whiff of victory, Perry was up to third after a few more laps. But 20 minutes was nearly up, and he was unsure who was still ahead of him. In fact, it was Justin Undery, with Keith J just behind, and Keith’s distinctive blue overalls were a useful marker. Thundering down the main straight for the last time, Keith must have been aware that Perry had suddenly appeared in his 6 o’clock, and that this could only mean trouble. Sure enough, after scrabbling through turn 1 together and onto the short straight, the back end of Keith’s kart twitched momentarily into turn 2 and Perry was up to second. Only Justin was now ahead, but he was right there, only feet away. Through turn 3, onto the uphill straight, brake desperately late for the left-hand turn 4. Get it running straight, then slither through the right-hand turn 5 and onto the back straight. Across the circuit, the finish line marshal had the chequered flag ready. Concentrate. Stay on the power as long as you dare, then hard on the anchors for the turn 6 right-hander, control the slide… |
Perry was all over the back of his BA colleague. Hammer down out of 6, let it run wide to the left of the track, then keep your boot in and muscle it round to the left through 7. The back end of Justin’s kart steps out. No time to think. Point the kart at the inside of 8, dab of brake to point it round to the right, clip the apex, now pedal-to-metal as you exit, allowing the missile to drift to the left-hand side of the straight and across the line. Confusion. With karts 9 and 2 having started the final tour in first and second places respectively, the arrival of Perry’s no.25 at the front next time around did not register initially. As the marshals assumed there had been some sort of computer problem, it was left to the drivers involved in the battle to confirm that yes, Perry really had taken the lead and the win in the last corner of the race. Breathtaking stuff. |
But what of the others? The race 1 track/kart combination did not agree with Julian Berry, and Keith Jarvis passed him early on for second. Keith set off after Mike Wood, who was also beginning to struggle; on lap 3, Mike half-spun at turn 4 and Keith was into the lead. In turn, Keith came under pressure from Justin Undery and eventually relinquished the lead to him, although it was a hard scrap. At the flag, Justin was in second place having come from ninth on the grid, with Keith 0.26s behind. A strong drive from Richard Weber brought him home fourth after starting 14th, 3.39s ahead of easyJet’s Kevin Cracknell who monstered his way up from 26th. Kevin just managed to take the place from Alex Sanderson, the gap between them being 0.50s at the finish. There were good results also for Roberto Gaitanis (ninth after starting 24th) and Nick Pascoe (12th from 21st on the grid). |
Race 2, Lap 1, Turn 1. New karts and cold tyres but more confidence...
... perhaps too much confidence...
...and Turn 6 claims Claire Jarvis (5). Or did she just spot a bargain in a shop window and turned back...
Turn 6 was one of more unpredictable corners, and the newly relocated Race Control hut is positioned perfectly to catch and penalise those overly optimistic moves.
Race 2, then. A Cracknell / Musty front row, with Jarvis and Berry starting from the back, and lots of talent in between. It seemed that the circuit might be drying out slowly at long last; the vast majority of the personal fastest laps in the 17-lap race 1 were set on lap 14 or later. Sure enough, an examination of the laptimes at the end of the second race would reveal that everybody had improved, some of them dramatically (ThomsonFly’s Daniel Hess was quicker by 3.445s and Ian Wilson of bmi found 4.059s, to name only two). But lap 1 of race 2, with its cold tyres and unfamiliar machinery, is always a time for circumspection. A tricky call, especially if you’re at the front. At the green light, Kevin hugged the right-hand side of the track, intending to force Perry wide through Turn 1 while assessing his own kart’s strengths and weaknesses. But it was not to be. Entering Turn 1 on the inside, Kevin became aware of Perry alongside him halfway through the corner, evidently finding grip in the middle of the track. The pair were very close throughout the rest of the lap, but by the end of the first tour Perry had a small lead, and he spent the rest of the race pulling away bit-by-bit. Twenty minutes and eighteen laps later, he took the flag for his second win of the day, Kevin still in second place but now 7.8s behind. A dominant performance. |
Interestingly, while Perry improved his fastest lap by 1.677s to 1:05.059, a number of folk managed to go quicker still, although Perry’s sheer metronomic consistency won the race in the end. Kevin was one of four who got into the 1m04s bracket with a 1:04.875, as was Richard Weber who charged home in third after starting 14th, achieving a 1:04.876 fastest lap in the process. Julian Berry found the combination of new kart and improving track much more to his liking. Starting 26th and last, he engaged in a ferocious battle with KJ from the start. Both improved their quickest laps by over 3s in the course of a race-long battle, and at the flag they finished fourth and fifth, Julian eventually leading Keith home by 0.7s. Interesting things were going on elsewhere too. Home in eighth was Nick Pascoe, Nick taking a ‘laid-back’ approach to the race due to hinged pedals set in the ‘long’ position. Despite this, he still shaved 2.883s off his best time for race 1… made you wonder what might have been possible had he spotted the problem earlier. Nick finished 1.6s ahead of Alex Sanderson, who was up from 20th grid spot. A creditable performance in itself, but what really got your attention was the sheer blistering pace of the man. With a quickest race lap of 1:03.677, he was the only driver to get below 1m04s, and was getting on for a full second faster than the next quickest charioteer (Keith Jarvis, with a 1:04.539). This was fearsomely quick given the conditions, and you had to wonder what might have been possible had he kept it on the island a little more. |
As it was, Alex was the first to admit to a number of excursions into the jungle. The most impressive was a real show-stopper, Alex leaving the track at the outside of Turn 8 and burying the kart into the tyres up to its steering column. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” offered a marshal helpfully, as he extricated Alex from his predicament. Sensibly following the example of Roger the Cabin Boy, Alex smiled and said nothing. John Tarmar made up two places to finish tenth, improving his race 1 laptime by 2.918s in the process, and pipped Justin Undery to the post by a mere 0.17s. Justin came through the field from 18th and went 1.879s quicker than he had in race 1. New boy Hans Der Boven from easyJet was really getting to grips with Sandown at the end, starting 19th and coming home in 12th at the finish, and chucking it round in 1:05.472 at the end… 3.880s quicker than in race 1. So, another tricky race came to an end, and with it the championship. There was a tense interval while final numbers were crunched, and we had our result. Julian had done enough in the first four rounds to secure the title, but it was a very close-run thing. Keith’s 94 points from this round boosted his championship score to one behind Julian’s, and if he’d managed another couple of points here and there over the course of the year, well…. As Murray Walker used to say, ”’If’ is ‘Formula 1’ spelt backwards”. Yeah right. See you next year. |
Event 5 Podium Ceremony Richard Weber (bmi) 3rd, Perry Musty (BA) 1st, Kevin Cracknell (easyJet) 2nd
2007 AirlineKarting Championship L-R - Organisers Mike Wood (easyJet) 6th and Richard Weber (bmi) 3rd, Julian Berry (Virgin) 1st, Keith Jarvis (bmi) 2nd, Kevin Cracknell (easyJet) 4th. Justin Undery (BA) 5th (not in picture)
Race Result, Round 5
Friday 26th October 2007. Decidedly Damp.
Race 1 |
Race 2 |
|||||||||
Posn. |
Driver |
Airline |
Grid |
Finish |
Grid |
Finish |
Points |
|||
1 |
Perry Musty |
BA |
25 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
100 |
|||
2 |
Kevin Cracknell |
easyJet |
26 |
5 |
1 |
2 |
95 |
|||
Richard Weber |
bmi |
14 |
4 |
13 |
3 |
95 |
||||
4 |
Keith Jarvis |
bmi |
2 |
3 |
25 |
5 |
94 |
|||
5 |
Julian Berry |
Virgin |
1 |
7 |
26 |
4 |
91 |
|||
6 |
Justin Undery |
BA |
9 |
2 |
18 |
11 |
89 |
|||
7 |
Alex Sanderson |
BA |
7 |
6 |
20 |
9 |
87 |
|||
8 |
Roberto Gaitanis |
bmi |
24 |
9 |
3 |
7 |
86 |
|||
9 |
Mike Wood |
easyJet |
6 |
11 |
21 |
6 |
85 |
|||
10 |
Nick Pascoe |
BA |
21 |
12 |
6 |
8 |
82 |
|||
11 |
Mark Perry |
bmi |
4 |
8 |
23 |
14 |
80 |
|||
12 |
John Tarmar |
Exec |
15 |
16 |
12 |
10 |
76 |
|||
13 |
Peter Rogers |
Virgin |
10 |
10 |
17 |
17 |
75 |
|||
Andy Holmes |
BA |
13 |
14 |
14 |
13 |
75 |
||||
15 |
Mike McCann |
bmi |
11 |
13 |
16 |
15 |
74 |
|||
16 |
Hans der Boven |
easyJet |
8 |
17 |
19 |
12 |
73 |
|||
17 |
Tim Parrett |
BA |
12 |
15 |
15 |
20 |
67 |
|||
18 |
Claire Jarvis |
5 |
18 |
22 |
19 |
65 |
||||
19 |
Ed Ashfield |
easyJet |
19 |
24 |
8 |
16 |
62 |
|||
20 |
Ian Wilson |
bmi |
20 |
25 |
7 |
18 |
59 |
|||
21 |
Wouter de Muijnck |
Thomson |
18 |
23 |
9 |
21 |
58 |
|||
Rein Zwolsman |
easyJet |
3 |
21 |
24 |
23 |
58 |
||||
Simon Boxall |
17 |
20 |
10 |
24 |
58 |
|||||
Ben Whitby |
16 |
19 |
11 |
25 |
58 |
|||||
25 |
Steve Watson |
XL |
22 |
22 |
5 |
26 |
54 |
|||
Daniel Hess |
Thomson |
23 |
26 |
4 |
22 |
54 |
||||