The British Truck Racing Championship (BTRC) opening round at Brands Hatch on 25th-26th of March was a full success for T Sport Racing! The new team attracted the attention in an impressive manner and got great feedback from the people in the paddock. Numerous fans came to follow the action close up!
Two training sessions and a qualifying were scheduled for Friday afternoon; Terry Gibbon´s first chance to take his newly built MAN race truck onto real racing tarmac for the very first time.
It was an exciting moment for the whole team – especially since all of the team members had been working very hard until the very last minute in order to get the truck ready for this event. Although the basics seemed to work fine; there was an issue with the power steering box. Even though Terry was clearly struggling to get the truck around the corners, he managed to qualify 11th.
On Saturday, there were a Class A and two Class B races on the programme. At the BTRC, the first race of the weekend is always started in line with the ranking achieved in the qualifying. All following races, however, are started with a fully reversed grid.
Consequently, Terry had to start from the back of the grid. What an emotional moment as Terry made his way to the grid, he seemed more than happy to be back in a race truck! During the race he pushed hard but didn´t want to risk too much either. In the end, he finished the race on 10th place; a very good outcome resulting in him scoring his first championship point.
After the race, Terry informed his crew about an emerging problem with the gearbox starting to become increasingly serious. He was struggling to get the gear into the top split. That meant that the top speed was reduced by around 18mph or 30km/h. The only solution to fix that problem at the circuit would be replacing the gearbox. Unfortunately, nobody in the paddock had a matching gearbox as a spare.
We decided to take it easy on the Sunday and focused on working out the optimum general set-up and on resolving the steering issue, which we managed successfully.
All in all, we were overwhelmed by the attention and positive feedback we got throughout the weekend – both in terms of the new team set-up and concerning the new race truck.
Back at the workshop, we will now get the gearbox sorted out and work on further improvements before heading to Pembrey for the second race weekend of the season on 22nd and 23rd of April!
We’re looking forward to an exciting event at Pembrey and of course, we will keep you informed. Stay tuned!