Unusually for this particular heat, the school was only represented by team R-Pod, with the cars "Y-Pod?" and "R-PodS" competing in F24+ & F24 respectively. The only change to "Y-Pod?" was to fit a 'Watts-up' device to the car so we now knew what current we were drawing, "R-PodS" was virtually untouched since Castle Combe.
We passed through scrutineering with no problems & quickly ran "Y-Pod?" up & down to make sure the 'Watts-up' meter was working properly - all was well & we were confident of a good result. Our confidence was soon shattered as the cars pulled away for the F24+ race - "Y-Pod?" was left trailing well behind with no power. We pulled the car to one side & all seemed well so we started off again, only to grind to a halt a bit further down the track. After recovering the car, we found that a set-screw had come loose & a sprocket on the lay shaft was just free-spinning.... it was easily fixed but the recovery had cost us 30 minutes of the 1.5hr race & put us into last place. Once the car was back on the track, Alex set about catching up but despite consistently putting in fastest lap times, & overhauling 3 cars, we only managed to pull back to 6th place. If we had managed to fix the car only slightly earlier, we would have managed another lap & 3rd would have been possible.... if only......
The F24 race was quickly underway & soon settled down to a text-box event with pit-stops flowing smoothly and drivers settling into a steady rhythm. We were half way into the last hour & about to change to a new set of batteries that would easily get us to the end of the race when it all went wrong. The car pulled into the pits too close to the wall so the battery trolleys couldn't be used - in the confusion, the battery connector wasn't fully pushed home - the car started off well but stopped at the bottom of the pit straight. The recovery crew did an excellent job in getting the car back quickly (thanks guys) and we were soon back on the track for the remaining few minutes of the race. After this drama, we were staggered to have equalled our corporate challenge mileage and qualified as the top Chipping Sodbury school car in 8th place.
