Team MCR’s Castle Combe success

What do you do if you suffer a suspension failure whilst on track? Just ask UWTSD’s Tim Tudor, who faced that difficult scenario while racing with the University’s Team MCR, made up of students from BEng, BSc and HND Motorsport Programmes, at Castle Combe Circuit.

After suffering a rose joint failure, Tim narrowly avoided going off track and made it back to the pits. The team carried out the repair in the pitlane and sent the car back out with five minutes to spare, just enough time for car 40s other driver, Patrick, to set a lap that secured P3 on the starting grid.

It was an exciting weekend, which saw the team race hard for the full 50 minutes to achieve a 3rd and 5th place. They also won Driver of the Day in recognition of their outstanding team performance.

The team are now off to try their considerable skills at Brands Hatch.

Tim Tudor, senior lecturer at UWTSD said: “It was an excellent, challenging weekend, showcasing the students team work. It was great to see the students recover from the suspension failure in Qualifying to get it fixed during the session so both drivers qualified and lined up P3 on the grid.

“In the race the car was good in the wet and it was a great result to bring the car home in P3 in challenging wet conditions. Sincere thanks to the team!”

Driver John Iley, who is a Professor of Practice at UWTSD said: “The whole UWTSD team showed the progress they are making at Castle Combe. Essential repairs in very short timescales, excellent pit stop strategy and solid progress on set up and car updates.

“The car was very strong in the treacherously wet conditions and to get both cars in the top 5 was an appropriate reward for all the hard work by everyone behind the scenes.”

Alfie Morgan – team leader added: “Combe was a day the whole team can be proud of, the constantly changing conditions made for a challenging day for the team on top of the suspension failure in qualifying that was quickly repaired to get PS back out with 5 mins to go and take P3 eventually followed by a podium in the race. This alongside excellent driving from John Iley saw the best result for the team so far. Brands Hatch can’t come soon enough.”

The MCR student team evolved from a desire from students to apply the knowledge gained through the engineering programmes at UWTSD, to real racing . The students were supported by the University and Faculty Advisory, Tim Tudor to start racing a Formula Renault in the 750MC Formula 4 championship before the team moved to Monoposto with the same car. With a technical relationship growing with MCR Race Cars the decision was taken to swap to the Sports 2000 championship which would allow students to develop an MCR race car and then apply these developments against other professional and club teams.

Further Information

Rebecca Davies

Executive Press and Media Relations Officer    
Corporate Communications and PR    
Email: rebecca.davies@uwtsd.ac.uk    
Phone: 07384 467071