Tyre Troubles at Thruxton!
This weekend saw the home event for the Westcountry supported touring car team of TH Motorsport Racing with JAG. John George and the team were competing in rounds 4, 5, and 6 of the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship on Sunday at Thruxton in their Honda Integra Type R.
The JAG Communications car driven by Cornishman John George started the weekend on fine form, in the two free practice sessions the team saw John holding 12th and 13th with almost no problems and they were feeling buoyant about qualifying. However the team had not considered the slip stream effect and during qualifying proper all two car teams made full use of close running the team cars to give them the benefit of a slip stream down the fast straights an option that the one car team just didn’t have and so they ended the day in 17th place feeling a little dejected.
George commented “we actually did our fastest time of the day but everyone just went so much quicker with the slip stream effect there was nothing we could do about it and then began to overdrive the car to compensate and made it worse”
Race day on Sunday dried out for the first race and quickly saw John take 3 racing positions to be in 14th place unfortunately a front tyre punctured sending the car off the track and ripping the wing from the car, and pit a stop saw the car continue on track a lap down.
Race two saw the car start from 18th and after getting stuck behind slower cars for a number of laps it eventually got past and climbed to 15th position where it finished. Race three was a much better situation starting 15th allowed John to use his speed and after a few laps he was running in 14th and closing on the Chevvy of Harry Vualkhard. By lap ten the gap was closing fast when again a front left tyre failed and sent the car straight into the barrier at one of the fastest sections of the track, ending the day.
George said “what a shame in race three we had a decent start position and once I got going and had great pace I did my fastest lap of the weekend and was closing down on Harry when the tyre let go, not a good place for it to happen on a short straight. I was flat out in 5th gear doing 120 mph, the car just wouldn’t turn for the next corner. I just stood on the brakes to try and slow it down. They don’t expect you to go off there so there is no tyre wall just a metal barrier against an earth bank which doesn’t move. There was a bit of doubt that I may have fractured my wrist but we are just waiting to see what happens when the swelling goes down. But I am very happy with the way it went over the weekend, we know this place is so hard on tyres and punctures are just a part of what can happen in motor sport”
TH Motorsport boss Trevor Humphrey commented “that was more like it we had the speed all weekend to trouble the bigger teams. In free practice 1 Matt Jackson the race three winner was behind us, but the slip streaming in qualifying really hurt us, if we could have started 12th in race one just imagine where we could have been in race three. But we are doing this on a tiny one car budget so you have got to be happy just to be able to be competitive, in the third race we were only 8 tenths off the fastest lap, last year that would have been 3 seconds. We have a bit of work to do on the car after the crash in race 3 but we go to Donnington Park knowing we are getting stronger at every round .
JAG Motorsport director Andrew Whitaker had this to say about the weekend “what a great weekend for us I had lots of guests attending and we put on a real show and the car was great, John was making the best he could of the situation and really getting stuck in, we had a hundred plus people going loopy when John got by the faster cars of Pinkney and Bell at the start of race one and in race 3 the screaming was louder than the engines as we hunted down the Vualkhard car and they could see the gap closing. Ultimately this is all about value for sponsors and our guest’s really had value for money the BTCC is nothing if not exciting. Great weekend shame about the results but they will come.
The next round of the BTCC is at Donnington Park on May 17th
Date: 28/04/2009