Exclusive pictures of the GBH Time Attack car in action, a rundown of the fourth round at Oulton Park and

an interview with Bob Parker

Time Attack - Round 4 - July 5th - Oulton Park Circuit

I arrived at Oulton Park early SatI arrived at Oulton Park early saturday morning to find team GBH had already commandeered their specified pit/garage and were still fast asleep. Obviously they arrived Friday night and unloaded all the vans and tools.
After making everyone a cup of coffee we got down to the task of some serious Time Attacking.

After handing Bob his coffee we had a brief chat about the day ahead. We discussed the fact that it was currently chucking it down with rainand the going did not look good.
Bob's comment was that rain is a good leveler.

Interview

Lisa: Did you make any changes to the car due to the weather conditions?

Bob: We did first things first we put on a set of wet tyres and adjusted pressures accordingly. We also disconnected front and read anti roll bars and softened the damper settings.
We also felt we may have had too much power so boost was turned down to a minimum, but still allowing 400bhp through the rear wheels.

L: How did the new settings pan out in the first practice session?

B: Car felt good but was not really pushing hard as I used this session to learn the track, as it has been about 5 years since I last drove at Oulton and that was on the full circuit not the island circuit that they were using for Time Attack.

L: Did you make any changes between session 1 & session 2?

B: No further changes were made as I really did not get to feel the car on the limits in the first session as this was used as a learning curve. Session 2 turned out to be quite fruitful as I managed to push the car for the whole session still not really finding the end of the grip level.
The car felt fantastic and put us in 7th position during this warm up session.

L: So you were pleased with the set up and were looking forward to the qualifying session, how did that go?

B: There was last minute panic as the weather had changed dramatically to brilliant sunshine and a dry line was beginning to appear. This meant all the changes we had made for practice 1 & 2 had to be reversed.
We managed to achieve the setting changes and get the car out in the qualifier.
The qualifier was going well until the Evo 8 of Auto Ergonomics broke his rear diff coming out of Druids Corner leaving oil up the hill and under Warwick Bridge, This of course I found! And shortly afterwards found the right hand lock stops.. Oppps!
With my bum twitching like a pair of trumpeters lips I managed to pass the Evo 8 which was parked on the grass with the front bumper/splitter grinding its way at 90 degrees across the rumble strips. I managed to keep the car on the black stuff and gingerly made my way back to the pit with my tail firmly planted between my legs to stop any accidents.
After nervously getting out of the car and getting myself together I explained to the team what had happened as the session came to an abrupt end with the red flags being shown.

L: So you made through the qualifier by the skin of your teeth into the super battle.. how did that go?

B: We struggled!!!!
We came close to running out of time as the front bumper and splitter had to be removed from the car and some sort of fix sorted, due to the damage caused by the rumble strips in the previous session.
The bumper/splitter was bodged back together and refitted to the car with only 7mins left to put in a time in the super battle.
Went out did the warm up lap, mailed the throttle for a fast lap only to find the front of the car lifting up and down on the start finish straight because of the damage to the aero, so had to back off the throttle and just put a sunday drive time in.
But we finished the day with our championship points and only a small amount of damage to the car.