Tom went into this weekend with high hopes of a good finish.
His last few outing have gone exceptionally well and coming back to one of his favourite circuits things were looking good.
Testing & Qualifying
Testing on Saturday couldn’t have gone better setting fastest laps each time out.
This was confirmed with the final unofficial practice session of the day where everyone had to run their transponder and Tom came out on top.
Qualifying – one of his weakest elements of a weekend – also went well and he set the 3rd fastest time to leave him sitting nicely on the inside of the second row of the grid for his two heats.
The Heats
Sunday morning heat one, Tom got a good start but almost immediately there were signs of what was ahead as he struggled for pace and ended up finishing 7th, the team openly admitted that they made a wrong set up call as all the Fusion karts found it hard work.
Heat two and again he got a good start, but the pace wasn’t where it was expected to be and he had to fight hard for 5thplace. Unfortunately he would also incur a nose cone penalty which relegated him to 14th.
The Final
Final one he lined up 9th which wasn’t too bad considering his earlier problems but again the kart was visibly slow and had the team scratching their heads for an answer. He finished 10th but again had a penalty, and was placed 15th.
For the main final which was the only race to count for the Championship Points the team set about changing all that they could on the kart to try and rectify the problem. Tom had a bad start and lost a few positions but then started to make his way up through the field while everyone was fighting in a pack. However, as the field got strung out and the pace picked up he began to fall back again. In the end he finished a creditable 8th. The only good news from the weekend was of his main rivals who both had incidents during the race and finished in 9thand 10thplaces.
Tom had only the 23rd fastest lap out of 29 starters, so to finish 8th showed how well he actually raced with a badly performing kart.
Next round of the LGM Series is at Larkhall in Scotland 15/16thJune.
