TECHNICAL COLUMN PROVIDED BY WITHAM MOTORSPORT – DISTRIBUTORS OF MOTUL AUTOMOTIVE LUBRICANTS
How a British Touring Car Championship link-up helps push the boundaries
The British Touring Car Championship is known for its no-holds-barred competition. In a category where success can literally be measured in hundredths of a second, making sure each element of the package is performing to its maximum is crucial. Since 2011, Speedworks Motorsport has been at the cutting edge of the competition. For the last two seasons, it has operated the Toyota Gazoo Racing-backed Corolla. It has been a seven-time race winner since its inception and the Cheshire team will launch an all-out attack on the teams championship this year with an expanded two-car assault with Rory Butcher and Sam Smelt at the controls when the 30-race contest gets underway at Thruxton in Hampshire in early May.
Part of Speedworks’ preparations has been working hand in hand with Motul and Witham
Oils to make sure that the adrenaline flowing through the hatchback is as slick as it can be.
Christian Dick runs the Speedworks
Motorsport team with his wife Amy, and he says the partnership between his crew and Motul has grown over the course of nearly a decade.
“We have worked together since 2012,” he explains. “It has been a wonderful relationship and it has developed over the years. Initially, it was purely an oil supply deal and then there was some financial support.
“It has grown over the years and our link with Motul is now a proper technical partnership where we now send off oils that we have used in different temperature ranges. They look at our samples and see if they can improve it in any way. That works across the oils we use and the greases as well from all areas of the car.”
Not only does the relationship benefit both parties, it can also help protect the investment of the team in its race programmes, and that runs across all of Speedworks’ activities. It runs in many different categories, including the British GT championship alongside its BTCC campaign.
“If you were on the wrong product, the difference would be evident in the horsepower you can generate,” explains Dick. “If there is less drag and friction coming from the greases and oils, that is also going to improve your overall performance.
“The relationship is a pretty vital part of everything that we do at Speedworks and it isn’t just about how fast we can go on the track: there is an aspect of the product that looks after the life of the components too.”
As part of the relationship between the two parties, information is not only fed back from the team to the experts at Motul, it comes in the other direction too in the relentless quest for performance and perfection. Dick concludes: “There is a whole range of different products that we use and will listen to all the recommendations that come to us: that can be anything from a wheel-bearing grease to a CV joint grease. The oils are not only what you would think of traditionally, you have to include things like gearbox oils too. It is a highly complex area, and it is a great satisfaction to know that we have the real experts on our side.”