UK motorsport preparation company Tolman Motorsport is delighted with the performance of 'Phoenix', the Aquila CR1 which it ran in last weekend's BritCar 24 hour race at Silverstone. The company carried out a complete re-engineering program of the car in just three months following a fire and was delighted to achieve pole position in qualifying, the fastest lap of the race and a dominant performance before accident damage cut its debut short.
Run by former works technician Christopher Tolman, the company took delivery of the striking CR1 in early July, immediately following its retirement from a race at Castle Combe after a fire. While the damage caused was not severe, the car did require a complete strip-down to eliminate all traces of extinguishant prior to rebuild.
During this process, Tolman Motorsport was tasked with preparing the car for the UK's premiere 24 hour race, the BritCar 24H. Clearly the demands of an endurance race are very different from those for a straightforward sprint event and Tolman tackled the task with a clean-sheet approach, drawing on all of its 12 years of experience at the very highest levels of global motorsport.
Almost every aspect of the car was re-engineered by the Tolman Motorsport team, including the wiring, brakes, suspension, clutch and installation of the standard-specification Chevrolet LS7 engine. Around 80% of the new components were manufactured in-house and with the car re-assembled, the company embarked on a test program aimed at maximising the benefit of the extremely limited time available.
It carried out an evening's testing in the wind tunnel at MIRA to validate the aero work that had been carried out before heading to the Pembrey circuit in Wales for just two days of track-time. It managed to eradicate a host of issues that could have cut the CR1's competition debut short and felt that the car was ready to tackle the 24-hour race at Silverstone.
From the outset, it was clear that the Tolman-prepared and run Aquila was the class of the field. It took pole position in qualifying and by the end of the first lap of the race, already had a seven-second lead. Driven by Rob Huff, Kelvin Burt and Phil Bennet, the team didn't let up and six hours into the race, had built an impressive five-lap lead, as darkness, and the rain, fell.
The early promise of an exceptional debut was short-lived though, as contact with another car caused damage to the gearbox mountings and entailed a one-hour pit-stop while the Tolman Motorsport technicians carried out extensive work on the car, including repairing damage to the gearbox casing.
Once it was returned to the circuit, the car was again on the pace but Burt ultimately slid off the circuit in atrocious conditions and the race was over for the team.
Commenting after the event, MD of Tolman Motorsport, Christopher Tolman, said: "I am delighted with the performance and reliability that we have developed with the Aquila CR1 race car. Of course, I'm also bitterly disappointed that we weren't able to take the result that we had dared to hope might be possible with a brand-new car but I think the pace that Rob, Kelvin and Phil demonstrated suggest that we got the package pretty well spot on, out of the box.
"What I am most pleased about is that we managed this performance with a very limited amount of testing, as the time-scales we were working with were very tight. We had just two days of running and the longest we ran in any one session was 25 minutes, so to have a healthy lead after six hours is fantastic and a testament to the efforts put in by the whole team. It also proved the fundamental re-engineering work we carried-out in-house on the drawing board works in practice, as we were confident it would.
"I hope that we have not only demonstrated the potential of the Aquila CR1 as an endurance racer but also, that there is far more to come, once we have a chance to carry out further testing and development. The car has already been OK'd to carry on racing in BritCars and we hope to be able to demonstrate its ability to win races before too long."
