The Pod Movement were the only school team to make the trek to Rockingham with their two cars "Y-Pod?!" and "R-PodS SSC". Unfortunately one of our regular drivers couldn’t make the race so we 'borrowed' Gareth (one of the Rotary Racer drivers) for the event - a chance for him to try one of their competitor’s cars first hand… Our usual van wasn't available so we had been building a trailer for the few weeks before the race - this was only finished at 1:00 on the morning of the race so car preparation had to take a second place with unfortunate consequences...
This race was held on a week day as part of the learning grid initiative, so apart from the impressive field of 48 cars, there were plenty of spectators who were there visiting the learning grid events. Both cars were quickly through scrutineering & Y-Pod?! was asked to demonstrate the correct pit stop maneuvour during the drivers briefing, unfortunately this took longer than expected, so the car was late of the start of the race and had to start from the pit lane, losing at least half a lap. The F24+ race was uneventful with Y-Pod?! managing to claw its way back up to fourth place, with third in sight if the race had continued.
The F24 race started well with "R-PodS SSC" in the lead after the first lap, soon to be overhauled by Zebedee (from Sandbach school) who shot into an unassailable lead. After 3 hours, the situation was the same with "R-PodS SSC" in a very secure second place & everyone started talking about how dull the race was… this is always a bad thing to do, for at the next pit stop the motor twisted & the chain came off… a weld on the motor mount bracket had failed but we managed to brace it with a spanner, cable tied in place to stop it falling out. The car was back in the race & we were soon back in second again only to have another unscheduled stop with a puncture - after this was fixed we had dropped to fifth place with less than half an hour to go. All was going well & we had even briefly overtaken the race winner when we had a second puncture & had to be retuned on the recovery truck. At the end we had managed to make up a place and achieve fourth.
A final thanks to Gareth for standing in & driving so well in a strange car...
