At the weekend, it was made a rule that EVERY Rotax kart from minimax through to 177 Veterans had to come to the dummy grid with their clutch drum off the engine ready for inspection, this was for EVERY race (heats and finals).
What an absolute JOKE this was.
As much as I appreciate the scrutineers work, effort and time given to Karting, this has to be one of the most silly ideas to be implemented at a race meeting.
I know that they only had the best interests at heart, but it caused so many problems and what did it solve ?
I personally witnessed 1 Minimax driver lose his grid and told that he had to start from the back behind the novices, just because his father could not get the clutch back together quickly enough to avoid a delay. We were even told that there are 40 races to get through and could not afford to lose time.
The clutch drum was just looked at by a scrutineer to see if it was dry and then told to put it back on. There were people that simply just greased the drum when re-assembling !
I witnessed 1 person starting in front of me that didn't get checked at all even though his clutch was in bits because the scrut was nowhere to be seen !
I know of 1 driver that just presented the scrut with a spare drum for him to inspect because he didnt have the time to take the engine to bits before the race !
This wouldn't have been so bad if everyone had a mechanic to deal with this situation on the grid, but if you were a single driver/mechanic beleive me it was too much to go through.
I know that they wanted to be seen to be doing something about the clutch issue, but surely something else other than what happened should have been done.
All they had to do was stand someone on the slowest corner and listen to which engines are screaming their nuts off coming out of the corner to know which drivers to target, with the pre-warning that they would randomly strip clutches on the grid before a race, and anyone found to have a wet clutch would be banned from the meeting. Rather than telling everyone that they would check their clutch to see if they have lubricated it. I believe they caught someone that greased their drum after inspection and they were told to take it off and clean it before going out ! Did that driver get a penalty - NO ! Absolutely unbelievable.
If HKRC are to implement the same system regulary, then to be honest I will not bother racing as it is simply too much for a single driver/mechanic. I am all for catching someone who doing something against the rules, but it has to be something that works.
Any ideas for something that I forward to the committee in order to avoid the chaos that ensued from the weekend just gone ?
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