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For those that dont know this event had even more WR1OC involvlement than usual as aside from myself and Fraser (Houdini), WR1 Imposter came along and helped us out as well. Many thanks Martin
Team GCR arrived in Adria, near Venice in Italy on Wednesday after a mammoth 19 hour drive from the UK. The build up to the even at Adria had been not been ideal as the teams new driver Matt Hamilton had not been able to raise the funding to race, meaning the teams regular driver, G50 Cup star, Tom Dunstan would have to drive solo at this event. We were not alone however as the other quick G50 driven by Joe Osborne was also without a second driver, attempts to pair Tom and Joe up failed however as Ginetta wanted both cars on the grid rather than just one car with both drivers…..
Adria International Raceway is a slightly odd circuit, it is very tight and twists like a giant karting circuit, folded in on itself. The whole circuit can pretty much be seen from the (limited) spectator viewing mounds. This is contrasted by one of the most elaborate pit facilities anywhere in the world, attached to the back of the garages is a giant glass and steel building curved a bit like a shell and the teams using the garages actually park their giant race trucks in this building, under cover, backed up to the garages. In fact this structure is so big another row of race trucks can be parked up opposite with a sizeable walkway between the two. I have never seen anything like it at any of the circuits I have ever visited.
Anyway back to the racing. Team GCR and Tom soon found out that Adria is one of the toughest race tracks in Europe on brakes, after only two or three laps Tom was on the radio to the pits complaining he had lost the brakes completely and would have to do some cooling down laps. This was a great surprise to everyone as no one had expected the light Ginetta G50’s to struggle in this was, least of all Ginetta themselves who had only brought one set of brake pads between all three cars that were running! Hasty calls were made to UK to try and get some more pads sent over but they wouldn’t arrive until after the first race.
As our brakes were the most worn we got the new set of pads but even this was not ideal as it was felt we would still almost certainly need another set of new front pads before the weekend was out. Therefore we decided to conserve the brakes in the second free practice and asked Tom to initially go out and do just 5 laps and see where we were. As Tom topped the time sheets in the early stages we brought him in and sat out the rest of the session.
Then after some extensive scavenging by two team members, Fraser and Martin, we were able to fit some brake ducting to cool the front brake discs and callipers after Richard Dean, Managing Director of Ginetta Cars, cleared it with the FIA that the cars would be legal modified in this way and Mark and Callum made best use of it and the information obtained from Ginetta about airflow around the front to get as much airflow as possible to the brakes.
The lack of running in free practice may have had a cost as we ended up qualifying 7th and 9th, way below where we expected to be but as we knew our brakes were in better shape than some of the cars around us we felt all was not lost. We also found that the extra brake cooling whilst it vastly improved the braking had had the side effect of making the engine oil temperature far too high.
In Race 1 Tom made a clean start and was quickly up to 5th and by the time he came in from his pitstop he was up to 3rd place. A small error calling the pit entry point meant we had to hold him slightly longer in the pits to ensure we didn’t earn a drive through penalty for releasing him from the pits too early but he rejoined in 5th once again. Despite further modification to the brake ducting Tom was coming over the radio informing the team that the engine oil temperature was still far too high, the team told Tom to continue racing but this obviously meant he couldn’t ‘push’ as hard as he might have otherwise and by the end of the race he was also losing the brakes again. In the closing stages the battle from 2nd to 6th was the length of the 5 cars nose to tail and literally anything could have happened but Tom defended his position whilst also trying to overtake the cars in front and finished 5th.
In Race 2 Tom made one of his rocket starts taking several places off the line but unfortunately once again a (different to Silverstone) Nissan 350Z failed to notice our green Ginetta clearly ahead and turned heavily into the side of the car. Tom came onto the radio to Team Principal, Robin Sherwood “It’s a big one! A big accidentâ€
We only need one fully paid up driver, although the long term goal is to turn the team into a business, the team was also partly set up to run Tom who 'pays' us back for his drive in other ways. A young team like ours could not have achieved the results we did last year in our first year without a driver of Tom's calibre in the car.