Ardent Winter Series Round 1

On a freezing cold Sunday morning we all gathered outside what looks like a dis-used cattle shed, but is actually the home to Ardent Raceway one of the premier racing facilities in the country. Who'd have thunk it heh?!

Anyway, we all filed in hoping to find a warmth which wasn't there. Admittedly it warmed up by about lunchtime and actually got too hot if anything I though by later in the afternoon. I wasn't too worried about the cold, I was too busy getting to work sorting out my car...

I had quite a bit to do: I put a new X12 motor and fixed my broken belt/pulley situation from Friday. I was also sorting out a 13.5 motor for a friend who was borrowing my motor to race in that class. It turned out there was plenty of time for all of this though and I even had time to do some setup checks on the car before my first race.

As you can see from the pictures, it was a very busy meeting and when the power wouldn't stay on at the start of the day, everyone wondered in the mains was able to support the vast numbers of racers who had turned up to participate. However, the team at Ardent came through and did a great job keeping everyone happy throughout the day. The food service was excellent - I enjoyed a very tasty jacket potato with beans and cheese for my dinner!

My first two qualifiers were spent getting used to the racing conditions and learning the track to be honest. I also took some time out to cook my motor - I discovered that the pretty aggressive speedo settings which suited my old GM motor were a tad keen for the temperamental X12. It got up to 152 deg C in one run and I'm pretty sure I damaged the rotor during that run as it didn't feel the same afterwards. Luckily I have a spare rotor which I'll get round to putting in sometime.

Stefan came along and helped me with a speedo setup for the finals and the car felt much better than my setup attempts. I qualified 5th in the C final and managed to come 3rd in the first final and 2nd in the second final. However, this was only good enough to give me third overall, but I'm friends with the guys who beat me (Danny Holmes and Chris 'Buzz' Bosomworth) so I didn't mind too much!