RLR Testing Update

It’s been a run in to the forthcoming LMS season of rather mixed fortunes for RLR MSport

Happily the good fortune seems to surround the reliability and speed of the Lola Judd (BMW) the team having no major issues “just a crank sensor failure – and there’s double redundancy built in so we switched to the other one” reported after testing both at Estoril and Imola by Rob Garofall.

The bad luck seems to have been all weather related with the team’s second day at Estoril rained off “biblical proportions of rain” – “We ran in the wet on the first day but then it was just flooded.”

“Warm weather” testing at Imola found temperatures at around 2 degrees C on the first day, the car running on slicks but without real hope of getting heat into the rubber – The following day fell victim to 6 inches of overnight snowfall!

“I got to do some doughnuts in the pitlane and then a lap on the quad but that was about it!”  By the look of the snow and the nose of the Lola though it could have proved to be the world’s fastest snowplough!!

Back to the good parts though the team are clearly delighted with their Judd BMW powerplant, the new engine proving to have some advantages over the old turbo 4 pot AER despite a drop in power from the 2010 regs.

“The AER had a huge amount of low down torque but ran out of puff pretty quickly.

“The Judd BMW though has a much wider powerband and, if anything it’s slightly easier to drive, certainly from a standing start where the flywheel-less AER was…..difficult!

“Despite an increase in weight the balance of the car seems every bit as good as before and even though, as a 2010 car, we have more weight and a further power reduction the car seems far closer to the required pace – At times in 2010 the difference in straight line speed between some of the competition and our car made it feel like an LMP3!

Barry Gates was finding time as the track time rolled on but Simon Phillips was unable to test due to business commitments – he’ll join the team at the Paul ricard test next weekend though.