TOURING CARS/GT3

Ohlins has a near-monopoly in the World Touring Car Championship, supplying every make of car save for the Honda Civics. It’s a similar story in GT3. In a typical Blancpain GT field, at least 60 per cent of the cars will be running Ohlins kit, including marques such as Audi, Bentley, Mclaren and Lamborghini.

“The loads are similar in GT3 and touring cars,” says Jarlmark Nafver. “For a GT car, the damper has to be slightly more durable as the peak loading can be slightly higher, especially when they go to tracks like the Nurburgring and tend to go off the track more often!

“A GT3 damper will generally be bigger than LMP dampers whereas for touring cars it will be Macpherson struts, at least on the front. The TTX working principle will be the same for all and the key to perfomance.”

Durability is critical here, but astonishingly even with the aftermarket products, Ohlins dampers can achieve remarkable longevity. Given Ohlins has little direct involvement with GT customer teams, only doing development work with the manufacturers, this is vital.

“With the after-market products, we try to make them as reliable as possible,” says Jarlmark Nafver. “Often, they get to a GT team that doesn’t take care of the dampers as well as they should. But the last durability test we did with the damper system withstood six consecutive Nurburgring 24 Hours without service. I wouldn’t recommend going that far, but if they get serviced every 60 race hours then they will be happy.”