Jake Spencer’s Japanese Diary – Day Two

My two Kosmic karts during scrutineering, My mechanic Alessandro is standing on the left

Today was a really productive day for myself and the Kosmic Racing Department. When we arrived at the track, Oliver (Kosmic Team Manager) assigned all six team drivers with two brand new Vortex engines to use for the weekend. Alessandro (My Mechanic) and I fitted an engine each to both of my karts in preparation for the day.

10:00-10:15am – Free Practice Session 1
In free practice session one, all drivers spent most of the session running in one of their new engines. As I was running in the engine, the team decided to run old tyres on the kart. Drivers could choose to run any tyres as it was uncontrolled practice. The running in procedure for the KF2 engines as recommended by the engine builder was:

1)     5 minutes of running of the engine on the kart stand at minimal revs
2)     10-12 minutes of running on the track, slowly building up revs each lap
3)     Last 3 minutes of session – Full RPM

The session was constructive as I had the chance to sit behind some of the local Japanese drivers and learn where the racing lines were on the track.

11:15 – 11:45 am – Drivers Briefing
The drivers briefing was held in a conference style room at the track. It was much more formal in comparison to the drivers briefing we have in Australia. Drivers were spoken to in individual classes and the chief steward used a Powerpoint presentation to show what he expected of the drivers throughout the weekend. The briefing was spoken in English and Japan so that all drivers could understand. They constantly emphasised the point that drivers will be penalised for kart contact during the weekend. Each kart is fitted with a GoPro Camera on the front of their karts which can be used in the steward’s room if needed. Adding to this, the track is fitted with cameras so that all incidents can be viewed.

12:30 – Scrutineering
At scrutineering they closely check all karts, helmets and race suits to make sure they comply with the international CIK/FIA rules. They also allocate drivers with two of their six sets of controlled tyres for the weekend (4 sets of Dry Tyres and 2 sets of Wet Tyres). Two sets of the Dry Tyres must be used in controlled practice (Last session of today + four x 15 minute sessions tomorrow), while the rest of the tyres are used in qualifying and the races.

2:55 – 3:10pm – Free Practice Session 2

Data System on board my kart

This session was identical to free practice session 1, except this time I ran in my second engine on the second chassis. It was a good chance to make sure the new chassis and engine felt ok in case we needed to use them in any of the races.

3:55 – 4:10pm – Free Practice Session 3
This was my first real opportunity to drive the kart flat out and get a feel of the kart set up. As it was still classified as ‘free practice’, drivers were able to run new tyres without using any of their allocated tyres for the weekend. Almost every driver elected to run new tyres in this session.

I ended up being around .40 of a second off my fastest teammate in the session who races for the team fulltime (Nick Nielsan). The kart suffered from a bit of mid-corner understeer which we will try and fix tomorrow. After the session the team engineer downloaded all the data from each kart and sat the drivers down and compared each other’s best laps to see where we could all improve. The Kosmic team use a data system called ‘PI’ and it is very complex. Each system is priced at approximately 3000 Pounds and is able to compare each driver’s laps against one another. It showed that I was losing around .25 of a second on the straights, which they put down to my carby settings being too rich. My corner entry and exit speeds however were very similar to the lead driver which is promising.

5:40 – 6:00pm – Non-Qualifying Practice

Australian Karting featured in a European Karting magazine 'Vroom' which is being sold at the track.

The whole team decided to miss the last practice session of Thursday in order to save tyres for tomorrow. Each driver is allocated two sets of tyres for Non-Qualifying practice which includes the last session of today and four sessions tomorrow. We will run one set of new tyres in the first session tomorrow, and save the last set for the final session tomorrow night.

I am very excited to get back into the kart tomorrow and hopefully improve the set up and engine tuning. I believe they will have live timing for each session which you can view on this site – http://www.cikfia.com/competitions/cik-calendar/2012/suzuka/live.html.

Jake