Well it was an interesting weekend at Rockingham helping the Butler Motorsports maintained cars (two class A and one class B cars). Friday started well with me picking up 3 genuine BTCC spoilers for the new 1 series cars that are due to debut at Snetterton next month, including a genuine WSR spoiler mounting bracket, but when I got to Rockingham one of the A class cars had broken a suspension bolt, so the driver was unable to finish testing and was off to get a replacement, the other class A car then went on to allow the clutch release bearing to break down, so I drove to Silverstone to pick up a new release bearing, and have the clutch plate spring replaced at the same time. The team got this back into the car by the time we left Rockingham for the night.
Qualifying was uneventful with the two class A cars getting a 2nd and 3rd position on the grid and the class B car getting pole.
The actual races were all on the sunday, so we prepared the cars saturday night ready for the sundays races. The class B/C/D cars were out first and our pole sitter did a blinding job of finishing first, but when in parc ferme complained that the clutch was feeling bad, so deja vu and I was off again to Silverstone to get another clutch assembly, and the team proceeded to put the car back together when I returned and we had about 5 seconds to spare, but the car was out again.
During my trip to Silverstone the class A race was run, and our cars finished 2nd and 3rd and had an enjoyable race.
Due to the new clutch the class B car jumped the start (and received a 10 second penalty that we needed to make up in the race, so with this information we were on the pit wall telling the driver to get a move on, and in the end we managed to get back the whole 10 seconds and actually win the race, so good result there.
The final race was the class A cars, it did look like rain so they were sent out with a wet setup but the rain never appeared, so their cars were a little more of a handful in the dry than the drivers would of liked, but they finished with the 2nd and 3rd preserved.
Next race is at Snetterton probably on the 300, on the 10th/11th May, see you there.
Rockingham race report April 9th, 2014blog
