Triple Eight Race Engineering Chairman Ian Harrison has expressed his concern at the rule changes made by TOCA ahead of this weekend’s racing at Oulton Park.
As a result of the perceived performance disparities between the turbocharged and normally-aspirated cars TOCA has introduced a number of rule revisions. From this weekend onwards the S2000-specification, normally-aspirated cars have been given a weight break of 25 kilograms, whilst the S2000 BMW’s have had their 1st gear restriction lifted.
In addition a suspended rule change, meaning that it is not yet effective but could be introduced at any time by the championship organisers, of 0.05 boost restriction has been outlined by TOCA for the cars running NGTC turbocharged engines.
Triple Eight switched to running turbocharged Swindon engines this year after having run normally aspirated Vauxhall powerplants for the past four years in the Vectras.
“I have to admit disappointment that TOCA has again seen fit to penalize the turbocharged cars in the name of equivalency,” admitted Harrison. “I appreciate that they have a difficult job to do in managing the situation given all the politics and games involved but I didn’t think that a case to apply further measures had been made at Thruxton last time out.
“You can look at all the data you want, power curves, torque and top speeds etc but the data that counts is the race result. Every team knows how to work the system in terms of masking car performance and the last time I looked I noticed that one particular normally aspirated car had won a third of all the races held so far this season – a pretty good return particularly so when you bear in mind that the entry is dominated by turbo cars.
“That said we’ve just got to roll our sleeves up and get on with it. Oulton Park is a great circuit to race on. It presents a real challenge for the drivers and it is a favourite for many on the team. Last year James [Nash] took his first podium for us with a third in race three and I’d like to think he will do better than that this time around, hopefully by scoring his first win. Tony Gilham in our other car is looking more competitive too and there is no reason at all why we shouldn’t expect more points from him.”