Tony Lynch enjoyed a good weekend on his return to the MSA British Rallycross Championship in the MSA SuperNational class Team Geriatric Mini Cooper S.
In the buildup to the 2015 season, Lynch and the team have been working on a development programme for the MINI Cooper and the installing of a new suspension yeilded positive results at Croft for Round One of the British Rallycross SuperNational class of the championship.
Lynch began well with second place in heat one, with the handling much improved on the car. He went on to take a consistent run of third place finishes in the remaining heats, despite collected by an out-of-control rival in heat three which resulted in damage to his rear suspension, making the team work hard to repair the car for the final.
Lynch rewarded Team Geriatric’s hard work by competing in the final and starting on the front row. He would go on to finish in fourth place in the SuperNational Final and this has left him in a very optimistic mood ahead of Round two at Lydden Hill, due to take place over the Easter Weekend, where further improvements are expected.
“Although personally I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t make it onto the podium having started third, the team is delighted to come away from the opening round with a fourth place finish,” he said. “Going into the weekend, we knew we were down on power to a lot of the other cars and hoped that the new AVO suspension would improve the handling and allow us to make up for the power deficit we have,”
“The suspension worked perfectly and the improvement in the car from the final round of last season [in the BTRDA Series at the same circuit] was huge. Even when we picked up damage in the final heat, the car still performed, although I have to give a huge amount of credit to the boys for getting it straightened up a bit for the final.
“The handling wasn’t quite right in the final as the car was crabbing a bit, but despite that, we picked up a good result to start the season. We know that some of the other drivers had a few problems, which helped us, but you have to be in a position to take advantage in that situation, which we were,”
“We’ve got some work to do now to get the repairs to the rear end of the car completed which may alter our upgrade plans for Lydden Hill, but even if we have to go there with the car as it was this weekend, we know we’re in a decent position. We’re not going to get carried away after one round, but it was a good start to the year.”
