BELCAR ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP - R2 ZOLDER
Markus Palttala finished 7th in the 2nd round of the Belcar Endurance Championship last weekend in Zolder driving the Ford GT of Kuismanen Competition with Pertti Kuismanen. Palttala took the start from the front row and took over the lead half an hour into the race building a hefty gap before the 1st driver change at the 1 hour mark of the 2-hour 5-minute race. Palttala again proved his speed by setting the fastest lap of the race but the Finnish pair suffered from an overheating starter motor and the car taking minutes to fire up after the two obligatory pitstops cost the team about 4 minutes on the pitlane and 7th was the best they could achieve in the end. "Like in the 1st race, we were very competitive, but again our success tumbled on technical issues. Two weeks ago I was happy we fought back to 4th after the difficulties but 7th is really not where we want to be. Scoring some points was better than nothing but all our main competitors scored more, so we need to up our game and get on the podium in the next race." "The car was pretty good and we just did some minor changes on the set-up in the practice. All our focus was on the brakes which were fading much too quickly. We tried practically everything from changing all components to improving the cooling and ABS mapping. The feeling got much better but the durability not enough. I was able to live with it, but Pertti is braking with his right foot and on his 1st lap out he went off with the pedal on the floor, so in addition to making overtaking even slower cars difficult, it's pretty dangerous. Still, in the hindsight, we should not have directed the air from the engine room to the rear brakes, because I think that caused the starter motor problem." "Pertti is really unhappy for how it's been going now and the team needs to find a solution to the brake problem before the next race in Spa. Actually, I think Spa will be fine, because it's much easier on brakes than Zolder, but the race after that will be the 24 Hours of Zolder and we will not be there just to change brakes every couple of hours... Also, I'm curiously waiting for the FIA finally publishing the official BoP decisions, because last Sunday I got the feeling that some of our competitors driving a new car model were sandbagging in order to look a bit slower than they really are." |
