The little car that could ... and did
WELLINGTON motor racing team Capital Motorsport says a combination of Kiwi spirit, clever strategy and a hugely reliable SEAT Leon Supercopa car gave them the win in their class over much faster rivals in the testing Bathurst 12-hour endurance race on February 8.
The team battled temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius to win class D (cars with engines over three litres), beating 6 litre V8 Daytona sports cars and V8 BMWs, a task which team manager Phil Small says looked impossible before the race.
The crew was dealt a blow to its hopes a month out from the event, finding out its original class – cars between three and four litres – had been combined with the class above their original one.
‘‘We couldn’t beat the other cars in pure lap speed, we had to beat them in strategy for the race, and we had to do fast pit changes like refuelling and changing tyres and we had to be reliable. That was the only way we were ever going to gain position. A fast car in our class was lapping up to 18 seconds a lap faster, it is not like we were trying to find two or three seconds.’’
Their success is all the more impressive given the team of three drivers and six pit crew is made up largely of enthusiastic amateurs.
‘‘There is not one qualified mechanic on the team. We have got an ex panel beater, a car salesman, a builder, a printer, a university student, a stay-at-home Dad and an electrician. We all have a passion for motorsport and have crewed on cars competing in the North Island endurance series for more than four years now, so that gave us a good understanding of what to expect at Bathurst.’’
Mr Small says the change in class was not the only challenge they had to overcome, with the SEAT hit by another car in a practice session the day before the race, leaving it with a damaged front end and an oil leak from the power steering pump which had to be fixed.
‘‘We didn’t have the spare part for the power steering and neither did the other team that ran the same car at the track. Worse still, there was no new part in Australia, so it started to get more and more stressful at that point.’’
One of the pit crew contacted local Bathurst engineering firm, Robinson Precision Engines, where staff were prepared to drop everything and fix the part immediately.
During the 12-hour race the car also got two punctures from debris on the track and went into ‘‘limp mode’’ several times in the afternoon with its speed restricted to 70 kilometres an hour by the onboard computer after temperatures in the cabin reached more than 65C, triggering an ‘‘overheat’’ warning in the main engine computer.
‘‘We would have to do a lap in limp mode after some pit stops, then come in, reset the engine computer and then it would be fine until we had to pit again about 75 minutes later.’’
(Richard Billington said it was so hot in the cab, ‘‘my water bottle, which fits in a bracket on the roll cage, was so hot when I got it out that you could have a put a tea bag in it.’’)
Mr Small said the three drivers, Richard Billington, Stuart Owers and Lewis Scott had driven a clean, controlled race, and also had a stroke of luck in the last hour of the race when the lead car in their class suffered a broken gearbox, opening the way for their first in class and 16th overall placing against the 48 strong field of cars entered from all over the world. Bathurst was the first of a number of overseas races the team hopes to compete in, with the drivers to make a decision soon about January’s Dubai 24-hour race.