Plato has surprised many with the pace of the MG6 - Photo: Chris Gurton Photography
Leading up to the first round of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Triple Eight Race Engineering faced the mammoth task of turning the NGTC specification MG6 in to a competitive and ultimately a race winning car.
With the car still being designed on the Tuesday prior to the first race, technology took over with Zouch Dynamics Ltd signing up as a technical partner to help provide a setup direction to the team with the car not having turned a wheel in completed spec.
“Going into a program to design and manufacture a contender for the BTCC season in the timescales we had was an unbelievable challenge, at the very least we would require 6 months design time and many days circuit testing in normal circumstances” said Carl Faux, Chief Designer at Triple Eight Race Engineering.
“Our priorities were reliability and finishing races however the performance we were able to extract from the car on what was essentially day 2 of testing for us was beyond all expectations and is due in no small part to the effort and direction that Zouch Dynamics and Red Cedar Technology have provided.
“From getting the first validations on Saturday this allowed us to make some changes overnight that we had confidence in and they proved that right from the start we were in the game.”
With Jason Plato leading the championship after the first two race weekends the team will be looking to make the most of the simulations and gain valuable data throughout the year.
“The objective now is to bring developments to every event to keep us one step ahead of the competition and as we have a circuit testing restriction the ability to do more simulation mileage than any other team stands us in good stead.” explained Faux.
