JRM World RX were looking to improve on their performance from Day One of the 2016 World RX of Spain which saw mechanical issues for both of their drivers, Guy Wilks and Guerlain Chicherit.
However the Daventry based squad would suffer more issues during both Q3 and Q4 which meant that they would not progress out of qualifying. Wilks, returning to the team for the first of two events in the 2016 FIA World Rallycross Championship, had a difficult start to the day as he missed out on his Q3 start due to an electrical issue, however the former British Rally Champion would go on to finish his Q4 race in third place.
Meanwhile Chicherit, who was unable to compete at his home World RX event due to an engine issue, endured a more difficult time as he missed his Q3 race due to a gearbox issue with the BMW Mini Supercar before further issues in Q4 meant that the Frenchman would not compete at all on Sunday.
Chicherit explained his frustration at the car issues that ended his Sunday running:
“It’s been a super frustrating weekend. My objective coming to Barcelona was to increase my confidence and learn more about the car and the set-up that’s needed. But that’s been tricky with limited seat time. The positive to come out of the last two days is that we’ve got clearer visibility of what needs to be done to improve the car and I’ll be working with the guys in the team to make sure we’re stronger when we go racing again in a couple of weeks.”
Wilks took positive results from a difficult weekend:
“This certainly wasn’t the weekend we hoped for. The team and I have done some great things with the car in the past, but it’s quite obvious the pace of the cars in the championship has increased since then. It was a struggle in Barcelona and the niggling problems we had cost us valuable time. There are some positives to take from the weekend.
“The team did a fantastic job to keep motivated when the chips were down and we’ve got lots of evaluation to do because we’ve completed some more mileage. We need to learn from the data and make some effective changes before the next round.”
Team Principal James Rumsey outlined that an improvement was needed ahead of the World RX of Latvia in two weeks time:
“This will probably go down as our toughest weekend in World RX.” explained Rumsey. “Everyone’s hugely frustrated because this weekend’s results were not what we expected. We’ll go away from Barcelona and analyse everything very carefully so we can find the level of performance that matches our expectations.
“As a team, we’ve competed at the highest level of motorsport and won FIA world championships before. We’re determined to get things right in World RX and we’ll be pushing for an improvement in Latvia at the end of the month.”
