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Spirit Racing Aims For Strong Result After Successful Test |
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Monday, 30 April 2007 |
The Spirit Racing team will head to the French circuit of Val de Vienne next weekend (May 5/6), for round two of the VdeV European endurance series and hopes to be in the running for silverware over the course of the meeting.
The Spirit Motor Group backed team recently spent two days at the Welsh circuit of Pembrey to get to the bottom of the handling and mechanical issues that blighted its debut at Jarama in Spain last month.
An intensive programme was worked through and the entire team is now confident that it will be able to have both cars in the hunt for a step on the podium when it heads to France next week.
“The test at Pembrey went really, really well,” said driver Rob
Garofall. It was very positive and we got both cars running to within a
couple of tenths of each other, as well as finding more time in the
set-up of the Norma chassis too.”
“We knew that the car was good anyway, after taking pole position at
the opening round. It was a case of working out the small problems that
meant we were unable to make a proper challenge in Jarama. I think
we’re going to be very strong and the track at Val de Vienne should
suit the Norma too,” he added.
While Garofall will be sharing with team co-owner, Simon Phillips, the
second car will be driven by brothers Jamie and Adam Derbyshire. Jamie
is keen to get back into action after they suffered from an engine
mis-fire just over a month ago in Spain.
“I think everything that we worked through at Pembrey should pay off
for us next weekend,” he said. “We found the cause of the problems and
then worked through an intensive test, I did 130 laps without a break
on the second day, but both cars are where they should be now and we
know that we have a good car to take to Val de Vienne,” he added.
The highly competitive championship has a mixture of chassis
manufacturers vying for supremacy in the twin-driver endurance races.
The Spirit team is hoping that the Norma chassis will be able to score
a win ahead of the Jarama winning Juno teams in France.
“All credit to the guys at Juno, they got everything right in Jarama,”
added Jamie. “We will certainly be trying to push them along and aiming
for another British team victory out there against the experienced
European teams,” he added.
The team will get its weekend underway in testing for the event on
Friday before qualifying on Saturday. The three-hour race starts on
Sunday morning.
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