Aaron Scott’s Diary of A British GT Championship Driver
Round 9: “Challenging Conditions and a Podium at Soaking Spa ”

Aaron Scott joined the Richard Thorne Motorsport team for the Spa 1000 Kilometres, and helped the team to third place in the GT Cup class. Here is his story of a wet but rewarding weekend in the Ardennes.

“Master Motorsport decided not to run the Ultima in the Spa 1000 Kilometres because it did not have the required FIA crash test certification, and that left me without a drive. The team did a deal to enter the Damax Ferrari 360 at Spa and I had the offer of a run in it, but by then I had fixed up a ride with the Richard Thorne Motorsport GT Cup team to share their Morgan Aero 8 with Neil Cunningham and Adam Sharpe.

“As a company Morgan has a lot of enthusiasm for racing and Richard is one of its biggest dealers in the UK and has some ambitious plans for the future, so I was very pleased to be able to join the team. Obviously the Aero 8 is very different car to the Ultima, but it’s been competitive and very reliable all year in the Cup class so I was hopeful of a good finish. Because there are no anti-roll bars like you find on a purpose built racing car, the suspension feels a lot softer than the Ultima, which means that the Morgan rolls a bit more. In one way that makes the car easier to drive because the rolling is quite predictable, but in another way it’s more difficult to drive because the softer suspension means you get less feedback in terms of handling.

“Obviously the smaller displacement engine means that the Morgan is slower in a straight line than the Ultima. The main difference for me was that the BMW V8 engine in the Morgan is fuel injected, whereas the Chevrolet V8 in the Ultima uses a carburettor. That meant that the throttle in the Morgan was like an on-off switch and you had to get on the power quickly. In the Ultima you have to be smoother and more progressive with the power, or you spin the rear wheels.

“Neil Cunningham and I know each other really well and he’s been very keen for me to drive with him all season, so it was a good opportunity to see how we worked together. He’s very experienced and a fantastic teammate. He’s quick and shared a lot of information with Adam and myself who, like me, is a ‘young gun’.

“Because the deal for me to join the team came together quite late, I didn’t get an opportunity to test the Morgan before I went to Spa, so the first time I drove it was in the test on Friday. That meant that I had to learn about the Morgan and the circuit in very wet conditions, which wasn’t easy, but the car inspired a lot of confidence straight away. Even in difficult conditions the car felt neutral and well balanced. In fact I felt I got to grips with the car quicker than I did with the circuit.

“Although I’d driven there before in a Formula Ford single seater, I found I had to re-learn the circuit from the perspective of a driving it in a GT car. Spa is different to other tracks. It’s certainly an interesting circuit; it’s really long and a real driver’s track. You don’t tend to leave Spa thinking you’re on top of the place, like you might after spending a day at another track. I think it will always be a challenge no matter how many times I go there.

“Eau Rouge is the most famous corner at Spa and the first couple of time you go through it you think “Wow! This is amazing.” After a while it becomes just another piece of the track and even quite ordinary. The corners that really struck me were Pouhon, the double left hander that takes you back down the hill, that was pretty ‘ballsy’, and Blanchimont, the fast and hairy sweep leading into the “Bus Stop” chicane. You have to be careful there because you can get too good a run through Blanchimont and end up out braking yourself at the chicane. The other thing to bear in mind is that one lap of Spa is nearly four and a half miles, so just doing a three or four lap run really eats up the time in even in a two hour test session like we had on Friday. That adds to the difficulty of learning the track, especially when the team has to share track time between three drivers. Richard was very good about that and made sure that the time was evenly divided and each of us got good mileage.

“We had an electrical problem on Friday that was a repeat of what the factory Morgan Team had in the Spa 24 Hours, where the engine kept cutting out. The crew got around it basically by fooling the lambda sensors on the exhaust that kept shutting the engine down. The way it was done cost us a bit on horsepower because it affected how rich the ECU was making the engine run.

“Neil set the qualifying time and neither Adam or I got to drive the car because it really “monsooned” at the start of the session, so we waited quite a long time before going out. It proved to be the right thing to do because towards the end of the session the track was dry enough to use slicks, even though it was still a little damp in some places. Generally the weather changed throughout the weekend, which made it difficult to keep on top of the car as all of us had to deal with difficult conditions. Because we didn’t get to run in any consistent conditions, that limited the amount of work we could do on set-up.

“The track was damp for the warm up, which I did with the car on slicks, and Adam started the race on slicks, but the rain got so heavy that he had to change to full rain tyres after just two laps, which cost us some time. In hindsight if we’d had someone twenty minutes down the road from the track watching the weather for us I think we would have started the race on full wets. Then we made the change back to slicks a bit too soon and again lost some time because of that.

“Adam probably had the worst of the rain in the first stint and when I got into the car for the middle stint I was very aware of the fact that Neil and the team needed a podium finish to secure second place in the championship. I was under instructions not to do anything silly, so I drove quite conservatively to make sure that I handed the car over to Neil for the run to the flag. I concentrated on keeping the car in one piece, so I avoided using the kerbs. That was an interesting experience because in a way I felt more under pressure than at any time since I started racing. It was obvious that we could have a good result and to do that it was important to be a team player and not make any silly mistakes, which would have been easy to do on a wet Spa track.

“I stayed on slicks throughout my stint, which lasted for nearly two hours: towards the end of it there was a safety car period to retrieve the cars that had gone into the gravel traps. Unfortunately I stayed out too long because we thought there was more rain coming and we ended up pitting as the race went green again, which also cost us. These are things that happen in endurance racing and this was the first 1000 kilometre race for the team and me so you could say we learned the hard way.

“By the time I handed the car over to Neil we had got ahead of the Team Aero Morgan but we lost second in class to them when we made our third fuel stop. They were able to run quicker than us because of our engine problem and they also only made two fuel stops.

“The Porsches ran 1-2 from the start until the 176 car went out with a gearbox failure. We out qualified the class-winning car but they got ahead of us from the start and were able to run a much better pace throughout the race. The Porsche has really good straightline speed, and all of the drivers did a really good job and they avoided any problems. To be honest I wouldn’t have put money on that car winning the class, given the amount of rain that was coming down at various times during the race, I was expecting one of the girls to fall off, but they didn’t…
They both drove really well and set respectable times too.

“Our main goal was to get a podium finish and I think we worked well as a team throughout the weekend to achieve it. Adam had a slight off out of Les Combes during his stint. He brushed the wall, but there was no damage. Other than that we had no real dramas. I was very happy with the lap times that I was able to do in what were at times pretty challenging conditions. Sharing the track with the prototypes was a bit hairy. You had to keep an eye out for them because the speed difference was huge on almost every part of the track. All told we had a good solid race and for me it was a very positive weekend.

“After the race Richard was delighted and Morgan were over the moon too. It was a very good result for all of us. Everyone worked very hard and very well as a team. I’d really like to drive for the team again if they’ll have me…”

Adam, Aaron and Neil, below.