News - 2011
6th July:
Geri misses the July event at Rye House, - read the reason why here
5th June:
Geri races in the June event at Rye House, - read the report here
1st May:
Geri races in the May event at Rye House, - read the report here
22nd April:
A good day testing at Rye House - full report here
5th April:
Geri finally gets back out in competitive action at Rye House, - read the report here
19th March:
It was obvious that we needed help, Geri wasn't performing outdoors like the kid who showed so much promise indoors and it was getting him down. We felt he was being handicapped by our lack of knowledge at kart set-up. He was used to jumping in whatever kart he was given and driving around any problems with it where other kids would just throw their hands up and complain. The issue now was that all the other kids had perfect karts and Geri plainly didn't.
So we arranged a full test day at Rye House under the guidance of Steve Cutting who runs many of the cadets there. First off we just sent Geri out on track to put in some laps, and sure enough, he was well off the pace. While lap times in isolation are not necessarily much of a guide, there were novices out on track who were going much quicker. As the day progressed, Steve went through the kart and found a whole host of things wrong with it. The tracking was altered, the steering was altered, we played with tyre pressures while Steve showed us how to gauge what pressures we should be running at. Steve walked the track with Geri and made some minor changes to the lines he was using. Geri was under pressure to take the first bend flat all the way round, but there just wasn't enough grip and Geri was fighting the kart on the way out giving a slow exit speed going towards the first hairpin.
By the end of a long day Geri had improved by over 4 seconds from his first session, and he was getting quicker each session until the final one where his performance dropped a fraction - mainly because he was tired.
We learned the value of using the data logging on the kart - reading the maximum revs achieved would tell us if we needed to change the sprocket, looking at the minimum would give a clue on Geri's cornering speed. We came away hopeful of being more competitive on the race track next time out - but even then we still had work to do. An alignment check suggested all was not great at the front of the kart, so new stub axles, kingpinsd and castor kits were ordered from Zip and fitted in time for the April event.
5th March:
Geri was supposed to race in the March event at Rye House, but a couple of days earlier he fell ill with a sickness bug and had a couple of days off school. He was too out of sorts to race, we got up ready to drive to Rye House, but he plainly wasn't well enough so we sent him back to bed. He also missed a close friend's birhday party later that afternoon - and Geri is never one to miss a party!
26th February:
Geri is entered into the March event at Rye House so we went testing to check his kart was OK, it was early November when Geri last even sat in it. The session was short, just a couple of hours and it was wet all session long, the dry tyres stayed firmly locked away. There was little grip on track and visibility was not much better - Geri running straight off the track coming out of Pylon as an example. But at least the kart seems to run OK with no obvious issues other than a cracked rear hub which we will change before he is next out.
5th February:
Geri had a busy weekend and we hadn't the time prior to this to get some testing in. He hadn't driven since February, so we took the decision to miss the opening round of the championship.
