Tony Lynch is looking to re-discover the form he showed at the opening round of the 2015 British Rallycross Championship at Croft in March as he and the Lucas Oils Team Geriatric squad compete in this weekend’s double header event at Mondello Park.
Since Croft, Lynch has had a run of bad luck plague him in the MSA SuperNational Class MINI Cooper S. He showed good pace in the heats but suffered a retirement in round two at Lydden Hill whilst driveshaft failure in round three at Pembrey brought a halt to a sterling performance where Lynch made some exciting moves in the heat races.
The team has an extensive development programme this year for the MSA SuperNational car which has included upgraded suspension, a change of gearbox and work on the engine to improve its performance. This weekend sees a new injection system debut on the car, whilst a new engine programme will see the team improve further in the 2016 championship.
Lynch acknowledged the hard work ahead and the benefits this will bring to both rounds this weekend and beyond.
“It’s been a busy time for us since Pembrey as we worked to improve the car again, and we’ve made some good progress in recent weeks,” he said. “AVO have provided us with some new shock absorbers to try out this weekend so we can further improve the handling of the car, and we’ve worked closely with 1320 to examine the best way to increase our power. The end result of that work is that we are going to re-evaluate how we move forwards with the engine, but that isn’t something we can do overnight and we’ll look at it when the current season is at an end. For now, we’ve worked on some tweaks that will boost performance, and added to the new gearbox we debuted in the last round, we’re confident that we can put on a strong performance.”
Tony also explained about further developments for the car to help future progress.
“We’re also going to have a data logger fitted to the car for the first time this weekend which will allow us to gain a better understanding of exactly how the MINI is performing on track, and that will give us a huge advantage when it comes to the next part of our development plans. We know that there is a lot more still to come and it’s only because of the continued support and backing of sponsors like Lucas Oils, Pemberton Tyres, Sign-Tec and many others that we are able to keep pushing ahead with our plans. We’re heading in the right direction and hopefully we can show that again this weekend.”
