Round 1: “A frustrating But Character Building Weekend at Donington Park”

The first of a regular series: Master Motorsport driver Aaron Scott will be talking us through his season round by round. Alan Lis puts the words together.

“On Sunday I should have had my first race in the British GT Championship at Donington Park with Steven Brady in the Master Motorsport Ultima. Instead it turned into a tough and frustrating weekend for the team and I think it was a real achievement for us even to even take start. It was more than we expected 24 hours before, but our real problems began even earlier in the week.

“The engine came back from the builders on Monday and we were planning to shake down the car on Tuesday, but then we had a series of small problems that held us up a huge amount. On Wednesday night the oil pump seized just before it was put on the truck to bring it to Donington. So then we were searching for oil pumps and drive belts that we could use. Because we are running a Chevrolet V8 engine, the only place you can really get that stuff is America, but there wasn’t time to get what we needed sent over to England by the weekend, so that was a big problem.

“We managed to temporarily solve the problem by finding a bigger pump but we didn’t have the right belts so we had to modify the engine and brackets so we could use the belts that we had. It was a trial and error process in which we broke two belts and blew the seals in the pump, because scavenge pressure was too high. In the end we had to remove some of the gears in the pump before we got it right. It was a difficult job because with the engine installed the space in the engine bay is quite confined and to get the belts adjusted and aligned properly the engine has to come out of the car - and we had to do that three times on Friday morning.

“When the crew were loading the truck up on Saturday, Steven drove the car out of the workshop and into the yard and the oil pump threw another belt. We finally got it fixed at nine o’clock on Saturday evening and Steven was able to run the car up and down the yard at the factory before it was put in the truck and it was driven to Donington, arriving at 11pm.

“The plan was to run enough laps to qualify the car and drivers in the Sunday morning warm up but I had only done half a lap when the engine stopped. We got the car back to the garage, checked it over and found water in the fuel. The car’s tank was pumped out and fuel from a different drum was put in and the engine fired up and ran properly, so we decided to start the race.

On paper it might have been better to wait until the second round of the championship at Snetterton, but the small field meant that if we could get a finish we would score championship points so it was worth the effort.

“Luckily Steven and I had both raced at Donington last year so we were allowed to start from the back of the grid. Steven started the race and passed five cars on the first lap - but came into the pits at the end of lap two trailing smoke, because there was oil leaking through a rocker cover gasket.

"The rocker cover had been put on temporarily so that we could adjust the tappets when the engine warmed up. Then because we had so many other problems to chase we couldn’t do work through our normal list of jobs -- like adjusting the tappets.

"The crew replaced the gasket and topped up the oil and Steven was going to out again, but then we found the neck of the fuel tank was leaking so that really was it for us.

“It was definitely a character building weekend but these things happen in racing. Although my total on-track seat time in the car was less than a minute, Steven’s performance on those two laps proved that we have a very competitive car.

“We now plan to shake the car down at an airfield in the middle of this week and then do some testing at Silverstone on Friday, so we can finally get some miles on the car and be ready to show our true potential at Snetterton on April 21.”