Motorbase races to ready third car for Knockhill

The Motorbase team is readying to begin the off-track race to ensure it has three cars out for the next round of the BTCC season at Knockhill.

Following Luke Davenport’s accident at Croft, the team has been forced into building up a brand new car to ensure it fulfills its TBL commitments through the remainder of the campaign, with that car set to debut in the seventh round of the year.

Experienced NGTC car builder Willie Poole has been brought onboard to help with the build of the Focus, and has already put more than 400 hours of work into the shell in the past two weeks alongside Richard Townsend, who led the build of the five Focus cars already in existence.

Poole is expecting to work through the night until first thing Wednesday morning to complete his work before the Focus returns to the Motorbase factory near Brands Hatch for the build to continue – with the team then having just a week to finish prepping the car for its on-track debut.

“Obviously I’ve known Willie for a while through racing, and both he and Richard are based in the Midlands and work well together – so it was a no-brainer to ask him to help out,” team boss David Bartrum told TouringCarTimes. “Willie did some work for us after Martin [Depper] had his shunt at Thruxton but we hadn’t thrown a new shell at him, until now. With Willie and Richard working together we know that it’ll get done, even though it will be tight.

“There is a lot of work to be done. We’ve been able to do some of the prep work already whilst the shell is being worked on, so things like the RML subframes have been built up already, with the engine fitted in. We need to get the shell back from Willie so that we can do the modifications that we need to do on things like the wheel arches, and then the shell will have to be painted – which is a big job in itself.

“Once that is completed, we’ll have to get the car ready for all the wiring to go in and then we can get to a position where we actually start the build.”

Currently the team hopes to be in a position to start the build of the car by Monday [7 August] at the latest, with three days in the workshop before the car is taken north to Scotland ahead of the race weekend.

Any final work can then be completed on site ready for the start of on-track action.

“The plan is that from Monday to Wednesday, we’ll go flat out on the car to get as much done as we can,” Bartrum explained. “On Wednesday, the trucks will leave with the other two cars to go to shakedown and then they’ll head on to Carlisle for an overnight halt and to Knockhill on Thursday morning to set up.

“Whilst everything is being set up at the circuit, the new car and the guys who have been working on it can then travel up on Thursday and when the car arrives, we’ll take it out of the trailer and put it straight into the awning.

“We’ve then got Friday to finish it off and we’ll have any of the parts we need onsite on the back of the truck.”

With the decision to expand to three cars this season meaning Motorbase’s ‘spare’ car was brought into action, the team was left without a back-up in the event of an accident, but such a move isn’t unusual on the grid as teams look to maximise the budgets available.

“Luke’s car hadn’t been used since 2014 when Giovanardi drove it, and had just been sitting in the factory,” Bartrum said. “When we expanded to three cars this season, we still had two new shells in stock but one was just a road shell and the other had been de-bracketed but not really pushed on beyond that ready for use.

“Perhaps we could have done more work to prepare it, but you look at the fact that we’d had Luke’s car sat there and never needed to use it, and perhaps naïvely thought that we have the capability to do most repair work in house and wouldn’t be involved in such a big shunt that we’d need to build a whole new car.

“You also have to consider things like budget as it costs money to build up a shell that you might not then need to use. Like any team boss, you want to make the most of the budget you have, and not spend money you don’t need to spend.

“Unfortunately this is just one of those instances where what happened at Croft has forced our hand, and we have to make the investment and build up the car to ensure we have three cars on the grid for the final rounds.”

Motorbase has yet to reveal who will drive the car for the remainder of the season, with an announcement due in the next week.