After a short summer break it was back to the track at the start of August with a long haul visit to Anglesey’s Coastal Circuit. A long drive up from our little island off the south coast of England to another little island off the north coast of Wales and we arrived Thursday evening ready for testing on Friday.
Our second visit since to Anglesey since we started racing in the Locost Series, its a track that we have struggled to come to terms with and this visit would prove to be no exception. With the new engine installed but running old dampers, we struggled to dial out the understeer on Friday testing, finishing the day scratching heads as to how the setup could be altered further to get the car to turn in, especially at the last corner.
Qualifying on Saturday morning and a couple of tweeks to the car were cautiously made to try to improve things, but expected results were not achieved, qualifying 14th for race 1 and 16th for race 2. An interesting little accident at the start of qualifying from a couple of other Locosts reminded us that its better to keep it in one piece as its a long trip to make to not even get to the grid.
Starting from 14th it would be a challenge to make progress with the car still refusing to turn in on certain corners but after a hard fought race some reasonable championship points were gained by finishing 10th out of the 32 starters.
Discussing set up overnight, we made some minor changes for Round 10 on Sunday, the car starting to feel somewhat akin to how we like it. Starting from 16th on the grid would always leave us on the back foot with a lot of ground to make up and a driver error into the first corner on lap 7 resulted in contact with Lee McNamara putting both cars off the circuit. Unable to rejoin until the Locost train had passed, the end of Lap 7 saw us back in the penultimate position and not much time left to make up some places. Cautiously making progress saw a finish in a disappointing 21st place, one of the very few occasions where the finish position has not been an improvement on grid position.
With a few points in the bag, it was time to update those dampers for the next event, a return to Donington in September.
Down the Corkscrew on the Coastal Circuit at Anglesey, chased by Shaun Brame #32
Crashing waves, but luckily, no crashing cars
Being hunted down by Vicky Pickles
2 Responses to Anglesey Rounds 9 & 10, August 2012