RML Head of Design Mark Way has admitted that the company did not expect the recently updated Cruze to performance so strongly in the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) races in Beijing, where Tom Chilton scored victory for ROAL Motorsport.
RML brought a number of updates in Beijing to the six TC1 Cruzes which it built for the 2014 season. The updates immediately paid off, with its cars performing strong in both qualifying and in the races.
Chilton scored a shock pole position and race one win on Sunday in the ROAL-prepared RML Cruze, comfortably securing victory despite the twisty nature of the circuit not expecting to suit the car.
“We had an incredible weekend in Beijing with pole position, two cars in the top five shootout and the first non-Citroën feature race win,” explained Way. “Honestly, I was not expecting the performance upgrades to show in Beijing, given the characteristics of the circuit against the strengths of the other cars.
“Traditionally the Cruze has not particularly favoured tight, twisting tracks such as this one, so Tom’s surprise with his pole position was not unjustified! But it’s possible the upgrades were doing more than we anticipated.”
However as a result of the strong weekend, the Chevrolet cars will now be handed an extra 20 kg of weight for this weekend’s races in Shanghai, taking their total compensation weight to 40 kg.
“With such a strong performance last weekend, of course we have additional success ballast,” added Way. “Honda will also lose some weight [-10 kg] going into Shanghai which inevitably makes the job for the Cruze teams that bit more difficult. However it certainly seems we have made a step forward and all being well, progress will continue.
“No doubt we need to fine tune the set up to get the best from the new parts, but we eagerly await Shanghai to see if this translates, in spite of the extra ballast.”
Testing in Shanghai takes place at 10:20 local time on Friday (04:20 CEST, 03:20 BST).