Tuesday, 29 June 2010 02:00
KOSMIC KART DRIVER CIAN FOTHERGILL HOLDS A 39 POINT LEAD GOING INTO THE FINAL ROUND AT THE CIK "STARS OF KARTING" SERIES

Cian is still leading the series with his Kosmic/Parilla powered kart despite breaking a chain and his chance of another podium finish in round 3.

Cian's Round 3 - Driver Race Report

Round 3 of the "Stars Of Karting" saw sunny blue skies all weekend for the karters at Eastern Creek Raceway in NSW.

During Friday practice for the Pro Light KF1, Cian was suffering oversteer problems which we just couldn't rectify, was lacking grip overall and changes we were not getting much response from the kart after changes were made. We were still pretty fast though, as we were only 4-5 tenths off the guys who were putting on new rubber which we figured was a 5-6 tenths gain.

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(Cian Fothergill in his KOSMIC)

Sure enough, as Saturday qualifying came around, and with new tyres on we were able to set the fastest time, even though we were still not entirely happy with the set-up of the Kart. Quickly, before the top ten shoot-out we made a major change to the balance of the kart by moving the seat position.

It did not work however and as in Round 1 we slipped from 1st to 3rd in the shoot-out, still a good starting position though. Prior to Heat 1 we moved the seat back to where it was, made some big changes to the front end geometry and made up one position to 2nd place by race end and fastest lap along the way.

Heat 2 saw us drop to 4th as the Kart was still not handling as we would have liked. But Heat 3, we made the changes to the front end of the Kart, altering camber, castor and changing the front torsion bar, that transformed the Kart completely. We rocketed to a 2 second lead, fastest lap along the way and cruised to an easy win.

With the combined points of the 3 Heats, that put us on Pole for the first Final. By now the Kart was on rails and we cruised home to a convincing win saving tyres along the way as the track was proving to be very hard on tyres, several competitors having virtually none left by the end of Heat 3.

On pole again for the 2nd (and last) Final we again got the jump and was cruising along with a 2 second lead, pulling away from second, setting fastest lap when the chain snapped on lap 14 of 25, and that was it, race over!
Our fault really, because we put on a new chain of the type we had never run before. So obviously the chain that was given to us which we were told was good, was not... We will in future stick to the RK chain which has never given us any trouble.

So we missed out on the NSW State Championship and lost valuable points for the National Championship, luckily for us, Hayden McBryde who is currently second in the championship behind us suffered brake failure in the same final so our points loss was not so crucial.

Cian holds a 39 point lead however going into the final round of the 2010 CIK Stars of Karting Series hosted by the Go-Kart Club of Victoria at Melbourne’s Trade In My Car complex on August 6-8


John Grother is the head of the KOSMIC TRACKSA Racing Team for the 2010 Stars of Karting Series.
All five drivers in the TRACKSA Racing line-up will compete aboard the European-made Kosmic chassis with Grother and Fothergill set to compete in the Pro Light(KF1) category, Brydon in the Pro Gearbox(KZ2), Ingram in Pro Junior(KF3) and Simonds in the supporting Clubman category.