Aaron Scott’s Diary of British GT Championship Driver
Round 6: “Dashed Hopes at Sweltering Oulton”

Master Motorsport Ultima driver Aaron Scott tells his story of a weekend in Cheshire where the sun shone on the team but good fortune, ultimately, did not…we’re posting this with Rockingham material deliberately, as we’re so late with this one.

“Before the British GT Championship race at Oulton Park there was quite a bit of work to do on Master Motorsport Ultima. We’d had quite severe brake problems at Castle Combe, where I had to pump the pedal to get any brakes at all during the race. Steve Tuckey from Brembo overhauled the system for us and for Oulton Park they were perfect. The engine overheating problem at Castle Combe meant that we had to short shift to keep the temperatures down. That was addressed by a rebuild, which Steve’s dad Jimmy Brady did himself. He put in new piston rings and he also found that there was a sticking valve, which maybe explains why the engine has sometimes lost a cylinder this year. So for Oulton Park we had a really strong engine again and we were able to use it to its full potential.

“On the test day I thought we had another small gearbox problem but when the crew had a look at it they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. We have actually modified the selector barrel since the last race and that made us a bit wary. In fact the gearbox seems to be working a bit better than it has in the past. The problems we have had this year mean that we’re pretty touchy about the gearbox now. It seems like I just missed a gear and we perhaps over reacted.

“The car was back together in time to do a few laps at the end of the session and it ran really strongly then. It was the first time I can remember all year that we parked up at the end of the test day and sat down and talked about what the car was doing and how we could improve it, rather than having to chase down problems. We had a proper debrief on Friday night and made some changes for practice on Saturday.

“The team had a fairly good set up for Oulton last year, and that was used as our starting point and we were immediately on the pace. Dunlop gave us some tyre temperature feedback and we able to use that to make some changes to the camber settings. We also changed the front damper settings and the car felt even better. I was able to run a 1m 42.5s lap straight away on old tyres and things were looking really good for qualifying.

“On the new tyres and with another small front damper adjustment I managed a 1m 41.4 in qualifying that gave us third place on the grid. Generally I think the track was a bit slower in the afternoon because of the heat: if the temperature had been the same as for practice I’m pretty sure I could have gone faster. The track was probably a second shy of what it should have been. Overall we made a massive gain between testing and qualifying and we carried that momentum onto race day. Steve was quickest in the warm up and fastest through the speed traps. We were both looking strong for the race and we knew that the Ultima could run an hour and a quarter on one tank of fuel. When the race was shortened to an hour we felt that we lost out a bit, because the Moslers are probably able to run quicker if they don’t have to keep an eye on fuel.

“Oulton Park is one of my favourite tracks, but traffic can be a big problem there, it’s hard to get by the GTO class cars so that can affect the time teams do their driver change and other elements of race strategy. Another factor is that pit stop window being open between 20 and 35 minutes allows teams to put their slower driver in first for just 20 minutes. Steve and I are quite well matched on lap times so that gives us other options. We can afford to wait and see the traffic situation. If stopping early helps, we can do that. If running a few more laps can help, we can do that.

“The weather on race day was very hot which meant that the temperature inside the car was high. I don’t usually notice the heat until the slowing down lap of a race and even after you get out of the car you usually look worse than you feel… The team added some scoops to the body to try and get some more air into the car but really you just have to get on with it. If you’re fit a 30-40 minute stint even in a hot car shouldn’t be a problem.

“In the race Steve made a good start but Balfe was quicker than we thought he would be so he followed the Mosler into the first corner. Shane Lynch in the Eclipse TVR had a go at Balfe round the outside and Steve held the inside line so it got a bit tight on the exit. The TVR put a couple of wheels on the grass but they both made it through the corner and Steve managed to pull by through the next right hander. Shane was pushing quite hard in the TVR and Steve had his work cut out to stay ahead of him. It looked like the Mosler seemed to have an advantage over both of them because it seemed to be able to get its power down better coming out of the corners. As the race went on the TVR was all over the back of Steve, who ended up blocking Shane slightly because he had problems from hitting the throttle and brake at the same time, which was causing the Ultima to overshoot a few braking points.

Steve managed to hold Shane off until he made a mistake at Lodge, where he missed a downshift and came out of the corner in third instead of second and the TVR went by.

“We made our driver change at almost exactly half distance as we were beginning to get held up by some of the GT Cup cars that had made their pitstops. Just before he came in Steve radioed to say that the car had a lot of oversteer, so when we did the driver swap the crew checked the tyre pressures thinking that was the problem.

When I got into the car I had a lot of oversteer straight away which made it very difficult to drive. Martin Short was behind me and I tried to hold him off by running a relatively slow pace but being quick in the right places.

Then I had a bit of a moment going into the Shell hairpin and he got up the inside of me and went by at the first chicane. I hung onto him but the oversteer was getting worse and worse which made me think that the tyres were screwed. Then I had a really big moment which made me think I’d got a puncture, so I came into the pits and made what turned out to be quite a long stop. First we couldn’t get the wheel off and then we finally managed that we had a hard time getting the replacement secured. All of the nuts had been tightened up with the same torque wrench but it had been set wrongly and the right rear wheel nut had loosened.

It was caught by the retention pins on the hub, so the wheel stayed on but unfortunately the thread on the hub was damaged so we couldn’t fully tighten the nut.

The car was oversteering badly as soon as I got back on the track because the wheel wasn’t on properly, so we had to retire the car.

“It was very disappointing to end the race like that because with the retirements that came later we would have finished on the podium. But there are a lot of positive points to take from the weekend, even if the final result was disappointing The main consolation for us is that we now know how fast the Ultima is. Even with the loose wheel nut the Mosler wasn’t a lot quicker. When it eventually all comes right for us we’re going to be real challengers for a win…”