GT Cup Brands Hatch 31st Jul – 1st Aug

August 2, 2010 GT Cup No Comments

We were looking forward to racing alongside the mixed bag of GT cars that the GT Cup attracts. Those of you that have been following us on Twitter will know that things didn’t quite go to plan…

Free Practice/Qualifying

Free practice and qualifying went as well as could be expected. The car hadn’t been run on track since the engine rebuild so both of the free practice sessions were used to shake the car down and scrub tyres in. The weather was pretty changeable which made getting the car set up tough, but we did our best.

It was completely dry and very warm for qualifying, but we paid the price of lack of running time.  We found it hard to set a quick time and ended up qualifying near the back of the field for both races. It was decided to make a few changes to improve font end grip and we’d see how we went in race 1.

Race 1

Warm and dry again and we felt positive that we could do better than our qualifying position suggested, however our race didn’t go to plan. The first lap provided some exciting moments, too exciting for some. Our race came to an end just after Surtees when we got mixed up with someone else’s accident and damaged our front radiator. With the car limping back to the pits we didn’t know if our weekend was over or not, but we’d do our best to get out for race 2 if we could.

The damage wasn’t as bad as we first expected, replacing the radiator was all that was needed and we had a spare.  We would be out for race 2.

Race 2

This race was much more sensible and we improved our overall speed, eventually being classified in 19th after a few close battles in the middle of the race. Not a great result but after so long out of the car and very little set up time we did OK. We managed to get a reasonable amount of track time to help develop car set up and the engine work has proven a success, which was important.

We’re all looking forward to the next outing and for better results!

GT Cup Aug 2010

July 27, 2010 General News No Comments

After a longer break than we intended, we are looking forward to returning to the track next weekend in the GT Cup round at Brands Hatch. We haven’t been out as a team since the end of the ’08 season so we are all looking forward to it. During the break some members of the team have had some track time, most notably Paul made an appearance in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB last year at Silverstone.

During our motor racing sabbatical we’ve been very busy. We’ve moved premises to a more central location, which has been a great success. We can now offer our customers a much improved experience for both sales and servicing of their road cars and the increased room has meant we have been able to take on more technicians and expand all areas of our business.

A key addition to the racing side of our business is Andy, a race engineer with factory team experience up to Le Mans level. Andy, who also has experience in British GT and Carrera Cup, has been with us for over a year now and has settled into the team while bringing a new level of technical know-how to the business.

Having Andy on board is sure to be of benefit our customers who wish to race their own cars and it also means we are now able to offer arrive and drive opportunities in our Porsche 996 GT3 Cup to experienced drivers with a realistic budget. If this interests you please contact Paul to discuss possibilities.

New for this year will be a real time Twitter update from meetings. You can follow us @dorsetsportscar and of course we’ll update the blog when we have news.

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