Last MR2 series event at Oulton Park.

Oulton Park September 2013

This was the first time the MR2 race series had visited Oulton Park so Friday testing was needed to learn the circuit.

After a good days testing with dry sunny weather I was happy with the car, my lap time and couldn’t wait to race on the Saturday.

Qualifying;

After warming the car and tyres on the first lap I decided to go for a quick lap on lap 2, pushing quite hard with what I thought would be a good lap I was disappointed to see a time of 1.12.3 when the previous day I’d been running in the 1.10’s. Pushing on towards the end of the quali session I’d posted a lap time of 1.11.8 which put me 7^th within this 25 car grid.

Race 1

After a good start I quickly moved into 4^th position before the end of lap 1, however I was losing ground to the leaders on the straights, I’d close the gap in the corners only for it to further extend on the straights. I was overtaken on lap 4 which pushed me back to 5^th, the lap after I was overtaken by another 3 cars falling further down the order to 8^th, although I was able to keep with the cars that had just overtaken me for the remainder of the race, I was concerned that my car was lacking power and fast laptime’s were impossible.

We checked the car after the race for a fault but unfortunately we couldn’t find anything amiss. I’d be starting race 2 knowing that my car wasn’t as quick as it should be and holding onto 8^th position was be difficult.

Race2

Another good start saw me jump to 7^th off the line although this wasn’t for long as I was soon powered past down the first straight, I was just trying to carry as much speed through the corners as possible because as I exited the corner the engine pick up was so slow, I felt like I was going backwards. I finished in 6^th position due to two retirements, I finished 15 seconds ahead of the car behind.

Once back to the workshop I was able to investigate further….. I have concluded that the problem was a cracked distributor cap and a faulty ECU which had retarded the ignition timing.

We’ll be testing the car at Donnington Park before the 3 race winter series, to check that the problem has been resolved.