BMW Team SRM enjoyed the opportunity to gain valuable mileage at the Townsville street circuit last weekend, the Melbourne-based operation lapping up the chance to travel north in the midst of a southern winter for the penultimate round of the Australian GT Championship.
Results across the weekend were mixed, with the team facing a selection of challenges, but importantly for Steven Richards, there were a lot of big positives to take away from the event.
“The results in the end don’t tell the full picture, but we’re very happy with the way the weekend unfolded,” Richards admitted. “The car responded well to everything we threw at it, which is important when you’re in a development stage, and both Max [Twigg] and I had good pace.
“Frustratingly, we’re always up against it with our pit stop compensation times, but in race two we were looking good for a top ten finish before slight contact during an overtaking move saw Max handed a drive through penalty. Ultimately that dropped us back down the order, but overall we took some good steps forward.
“We also suffered a little in the heat, just as we had done in Adelaide earlier in the year, but this time we had some options to improve the car to disguise some of the effects. For us, the heat is an homologation issue we can’t change until BMW have delivered some upgrades, but we’ve certainly provided them plenty of data which they’re using to make modifications.
“That said, we found some pace too by making some chassis changes which made a big difference in race two, but the reality was that Townsville in our current guise isn’t the ideal circuit for the M6 GT3, we’re still much better suited to the likes of Phillip Island, and I expect, Sydney Motorsport Park which is where we’ll be next month for the second round of the Endurance Championship.
“Between now and then we’ll be undertaking a couple of test days to learn even more from the car, but there’s no question that Sydney will see the strengths of the M6 emerge once more, and we want to be ready to exploit those strengths as much as we can.
“At times I feel like we’re repeating the same thing, but it’s sometimes difficult in the development stages of a new project like this to show just how far forward we are moving. A lot of our competition is from teams with cars that have been running for at least a full season or more, and whilst we make forward gains, their development curves are also finding gains, but it’s only a matter of time – together with all the great data we have – before we start to shorten the gap and work our way towards the front of the pack.”
BMW Team SRM now returns to endurance mode, with the next two events on the program at Sydney Motorsport Park (26-28 August), then the debut event for GT3 cars at New Zealand’s Hampton Downs (28-30 October). After that it’s off to Highlands Motorsport Park in New Zealand on 11-13 November for the final of both y=the Australian GT sprint and endurance championships.