During the year, Bayford Meadows run two championships, the Winter and main Summer championship. The winter championship saw Riley finish in second overall. The Summer Championship started on the 16th April 2023.
We are now beginning to see the impact of Motorsport UK replacing the Mini Max class with the new Rotax Inter category based on the 950 chassis. This meant that there are only 2 Junior Libre’s (2022 Mini Max) competing for the main championship. This is a shame, but when the replacement was announced, a lot of the Mini Max people went straight up to Juniors.
Saturday
As with the Winter Championship, race day starts straight off with the qualifying. Like with the March round, the Saturday would be wet, with the Sunday set to be dry. Again we chose to make minimal changes to the kart to make it easier to revert. It wasn’t all bad though, with the test day ending on a personal best of 49.45 in the last session when it had dried up somewhat.
Qualifying
With just one other person to compare with, it’s difficult, however Riley set a qualifying time of 49.18 towards the end of the session. This was just over half a second off the other Libre driver, and good enough to beat one junior.
Heat
On to the first heat. We know where our race is, so our aim is to try and beat the other person in our class. Lining up 17th on the grid, with the other Mini Max in 15thit was played safe at the start, on the second lap an incident in the juniors promoted us a place. Keeping nose clean and kart facing the right way gifted another place on lap 4 allowing him to bring it home in 15th overall. With his best lap time of 49.2, once again half a second off the other Libre, 4 seconds behind.
Pre-Final
In the pre-final, again it’s about keeping clean. With 2 juniors behind, there is no point blocking them, after they recovered at the start, it was a case of making it to the end. Despite a few incidents further up the grid, Riley came home 17th overall with a best time of 49.31. A little slower than the morning.
Final
After a safe start, on lap 2 an incident in the juniors gifted him 2 places. Further incidents on lap 5 gifted him another 2 places, before the recovering juniors got past on the second to last lap. With a lap time of 49.47.
Conclusion
As mentioned at the start, the lack of competitors in the class means we will be focusing on improving at Bayford in preparation for moving to the junior class. Hopefully you can see improvements happening and we will continue working to do so. Unfortunately I haven’t purchased the official media and concentrating on the track action I didn’t pick up my camera.
Thank you as always to our sponsors helping make this happen.
