Team BMR boss Warren Scott says he hopes that Subaru’s mechanical problems will be solved before the fourth meeting of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park next month.
BMR withdrew their four Subaru Levorg GT machines from the trio of races at Thruxton on Sunday morning under safety grounds, after discovering signs of fatigue on a component related to James Cole‘s fiery exit from round four at Donington Park.
Scott said that safety was paramount in such a situation, admitting that concern only became apparent after qualifying on Saturday evening.
“It’s devastating”, said Team BMR boss Scott when speaking to The Checkered Flag. “We obviously had the problem at Donington, sat down and thought about how we could solve that, but we didn’t have time for testing in between that and now.
“Early signs yesterday looked good. But, late last night, we were looking through the cars and they started to show a bit of fatigue.
“We tried to come up with a solution that would make us confident going into racing today but, early this morning, we couldn’t give find something that gave us the confidence that we knew we wouldn’t have a failure.
“But, when you’ve got any signs of fatigue on the high fuel pressure rail like we did at Donington, we had no choice but to pull the cars under safety grounds. We can’t risk the drivers, our fellow competitors or the marshals.”
Although Scott hopes to rectify the problem before Oulton Park, an initial solution was not able to be fully implemented in the gap between Donington and Thruxton’s visits due to a lack of testing.
“By the time we had designed and made it, there just wasn’t enough time”, Scott admitted. “We’ve already decided what we’re going to do and we’ll probably have the part next week.
“It won’t be about testing the chassis, it’ll be about putting as many miles on the cars as we can to be sure that this part isn’t going to be an issue.”
With Subaru still in a learning maiden season and getting to grips with a unique technical package in 2016, Scott admitted that gains were expected at Thruxton before their withdrawal.
“We’re learning hugely. This would have been another learning day today and I think, with this car and the way it handles, it would have crept up the grid a little bit.
“As I say, we had to take the safer option. The drives are gutted, all the engineers wanted to be out there but we had to take the sensible option.”
