Time Attack: Cadwell's mixed bag

We caught up with Team Milltek GT-R's driver Richard Marshall for his thoughts on the first event of the season held at Cadwell Park on the 5th May.

RM: Before leaving Nottingham on Friday Ben from GTC Racing asked me to do a log on the car. Unfortunately we found that the injector cycle had risen to unacceptable levels. With no time left we headed for Cadwell Park and Severn Valley Motorsport dispatched their chief GTR technician John to drive from Telford to Cadwell Park to possibly change the injectors and fuel pumps.

John turned up a 7:30pm and worked until 11:30pm and although he didn’t find a definitive fault – several parts were showing signs of fatigue..

Saturday morning brought a brighter though colder day and the first practise went without too much incident with the tyres scrubbed in and temps set we were all but ready for qualifying – unfortunately the weather had a different opinion and with the heavens opening the next session was declared a wet race and although we thought the Toyo tyres would quickly get up to temp they struggled through the session and a valuable lesson was learned – too much pressure can be let out quickly – too little pressure takes far too long to change.

Qualifying started well but the problem was to find a clear lap to get a fast lap time set.. With so many cars on track at the same time you need to drop back enough so you don’t catch the car in front but not enough for the car behind to overtake you.. Unfortunately I didn’t get a full clear lap and for this the time showed..

In the final the track was beautifully dry and the tyre grip was at its best for the day.

A couple laps in and with the tyres up to temp I got to set a fast lap but the clutch temp warning light came on and I had to do two slower laps to get the temps back down – on a 15 minute session this meant that I had one chance for a flying lap..

From the start / finish line up to the first sector stage the car was flying – with a top speed of 148 mph – 10 mph faster than our rivals best.. However a bad oil leak was sending oil onto the front and rear passenger side wheel, meaning traction was poor.. Entering the mountain section I was over a second up on my best lap but came up behind the Audi S2 which was being shown waved blue flags but was unable to get out of the way in time and the time was ruined.

So 4th place was the best we could manage on a track which we knew would not favour the big wide heavy GTR but were very content with the points overall.

Don't miss Round 2 of the Time Attack series featuring the Team Milltek GT-R at Knockhill on the 10th June.

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