It's been a couple of weeks since we set out for round two and it is probably time we made some posts about how things went. Short answer: Not so good. We made it up to 3 Sisters in good time on the Friday and set up ready for Practice. Things were running well throughout the practice sessions; we managed to get some good time in on the Zestino tyres and were even able to do some more testing with the front anti-roll bar set up.
With 5 minutes left of the practice session, we got a sharp reminder of just how quickly fortunes can change in motorsport - when we broke a prototype front suspension component, resulting in a trip back to the pits on the back of a recovery truck. The whole team sprang into action and we managed to patch the car up, revert to last year's steering setup, track up the front wheels and have it ready for qualifying in the 30 minutes available. Sadly the huge change in performance between the old and new steering resulted in a difficult first qualifying run, and the extra clutch kicking needed to initiate with that setup snapped a rear driveshaft and differential output on the second run. With 2 bad qualifying runs there was nothing to do but pack up and enjoy watching the rest of the event. Motorsport does not always go to plan but we still managed to get some vital data, the driver got plenty of seat time and we know what we can do to come back better for round 3 on the 4th/5th June.
