Marlin Special GT Championship – Castle Combe Circuit
Race Report for Round 4 – 23rd June
This race promised to be much better for the Marlin race cars of Mark and Dylan. This was especially true for Dylan who had had a turbo kit imported from the USA and fitted to his car.
In preparation for the race Dylan’s car had been modified from twin carbs to fuel injection, fitted with a new T3/4 turbo and remapped to suit on a rolling road which showed that the car was now producing 218BHP up from the previous 160BHP. This meant that the all important power to weight ratio was now over 400BHP per Tonne! This was followed by a test session at Llandow circuit which showed the cars true potential and in the words of Dylan was “devastatingly quick”. Did this mean that Dylan’s Marlin could finally mix it with the Ferrari 360’s at the top of Class D?
Alas it was not to be, as a manufacturing fault on the turbo meant that it self destructed on the first lap of qualifying. This left Dylan with no turbo for qualifying or the race which would not have been so bad in itself but the ECU had been remapped to suit the turbo. This meant that the mixture was running far too rich resulting in a power output of 110-120BHP instead of the 218BHP achieved on the rolling road. It was therefore inevitable that Dylan had a lonely race towards the beck of the field and finished second from last some 3 laps behind the leaders.
Mark however had no such problem as he was stilling running the normally aspirated 1.6 VTEC engine on twin carbs producing 160BHP. One problem that he did have however as did everyone else was the weather. The Caterham Academy Race had witnessed a sudden cloudburst with the Safety Car having to come out due to 3 cars being in the wall at Quarry! The track was however drying rapidly and the decision was made to run on slicks even though there were still some damp patches on the track. Mark had an eventful race dicing with a few cars eventually finishing 5th in Class D behind the 3 Ferrari 360’s and a Caterham.
The pressure is now on to get another turbo over from the States and into Dylan’s car in time for the next race on 15th July. Read next months report to see how Team Marlin get on or better still, get yourself down to Castle Combe for the Summer Racing Festival weekend on 14th and 15th July.