Motorsport Days Summer 2016

Technical

can really throw it into high-speed corners and have

confidence that the rear wheels will grip. On a slow cor-

ner, the Chevy V8 engine can pull you out with the crazy

amount of torque and aero. It’s a mixture of the fine-tun-

ing of high-end aerodynamics with LMP2 levels of grip.

An amazing car.”

At V de V Robertson worked closely with teammate

Colin White. He says: “It was Colin’s first time in the car

and he hadn’t had the testing I had so I gave him a lot

of feedback. I was explaining how to get the most out of

the car, but he wanted to make changes straight away

so I had to push him to learn about driving the car before

making changes.

“Once we had that, we found a base setup that

worked for both of us and, at the end of the day, you

need to compromise on the car’s setup to suit both driv-

ers. Colin did a great job and was faster than I thought

he would be. He was only 1.5 seconds off my fastest lap.

For him it was a mega achievement and to be that far off

with hardly any running is impressive.”

Working from the car while driving is also impor-

tant for race strategy and to keep the team on top of

everything that is going on. Robertson explains: “You

have to give constant feedback when you are in the car.

As it’s already set up, you just need to relay information

and tell the team when you are coming into the pits so

they know the changes you want to make.

“In the race, you are reading out numbers and telling

them the fuel usage so you can work out what’s needed

before the next stop. Towards the end of the race we

were really stretching it out to the end, so I had to do the

last 15 minutes on 50% speed with a two-minute gap

to the car behind me. On the last lap he was five-tenths

behind me, so I had one lap of fuel to hold him off with

cold tyres. With the team, we judged it all perfectly,” the

young driver recalled.

To show the sheer pace of the car, in February Robert-

son set out to achieve a sub-one-minute lap at Doning-

ton. He says: “I know it’s possible. We put a new set of

tyres on and I was about to do it but we got traffic. So

we put another new set of tyres on and, using the VBOX,

we could see it was possible. It was going to be a fast

one if I had a clear lap. We didn’t use the full 600bhp, as

we were running it in on a greasy track, so on the next

sunny day at Donington we’ll be fine.”

CMY