Racing News

30-Jun-10

British GT Update

After an amzing podium finish in both opneing British GT races at Oulton the season has taken a bit of rough turn. I had never driven the car at Oulton before I took the start so finish on the podium was something of a relief.

Round 2 at Knockhill was one of those "what else could go wrong" type events. I was working 16 hour days in the run up to the event trying to make upgrade parts fit that in some cases even Lotus had'nt tried fitting yet. Then the car would'nt start due to an unkown electrical fault. It was only lunch time of the Friday for Knockill the car sprung to life and we loaded up headed North.

The test day went brilliantly as we set the pace in both sessions on old tyres. In qualifying however, Chris Bialan did a brilliant job to place 2nd next to pro driver Jamie Stanley in a Ginetta G50 before I went out to try and take pole, on my 2nd lap round the gear cable broke! Game over. The repair failed on lap 2 of the first race, again game over. Our highly inginious engineer Ed Cobb reinvented the gear selector mechanism for race 2 and it ran like clock work, that is until 4 minutes from the end. A safety was called out and on the restart an over enthusiastic Dodge Viper rammed the back of the Lotus firing Chris straight off. We were leading!!

I did'nt go to Spa instead focusing on our Ginetta Junior driver who had shown great form in testing, unfortunately come race day the results did'nt materialise and we were now also out of contention for British GT honours.

We have however now had a little time to make the car handle on Avon slick tyres. With close to 290bhp and 760kgs in weight but the smallest tyres in class the team and car should show its potential at Rockingham on the 18th July.