Competing in the brand new Irish Touring Car Championship (ITCC), Barry Rabbitt and the Tuning Factory team have recently turned to Hankook Tyre as a performance tyre partner for their Integra Type R. Using the F200 competition Slick Tyre, Barry and Tuning Factory recently endured an unbelievable weekend at Mondello Park, the most recent ITCC Championship event. Barry has sent us this fantastic, blow-by-blow account of the weekend which will give you an excellent behind the scenes view of the event from the eyes of a driver.

Irish Touring Car Championship, Mondello Park , Kildare.

Build Up

As is customary in motorsport the bits we were waiting on for weeks arrived on the Thursday before the race, meaning it was last minute again. The lads at Tuning Factory removed the pedal box which was causing problems and went back to the standard OEM set up. They also built up a proper box with MFactory 3rd,4th and 5th dog gears and a shorter final drive. With the new Race DNA B18c pumping out about 260bhp we have to start all over again with designing the ratios in the box

Hankook tyres have come onboard to supply us with tyres and 6 nice new slicks showed up just in time. So with a totally new car we headed to Mondello on Saturday afternoon for some testing.

Testing

As soon as we got out on circuit it was obvious there was a mistake in the gear ratios. We pushed on regardless and by the end of a decent days testing we had done loads of 61s laps and a few well into the 60s.That sort of pace meant we had a good chance of a couple of wins

I went home after testing to get some rest. While I chilled out at home the Tuning Factory guys brought the car back to their workshop in Dublin and took out, stripped and rebuilt the box with a more suitable 2nd gear and mounted some fresh Hankook slicks on rims for Sunday. Its things like this that mark them out as being among the best in the business. Plenty of others would have said ‘it’ll do’ and not bothered!!

Went to bed on Saturday fairly confident, and being only 1 point behind Martin Treacy in the championship I had high hopes for coming out of the weekend at the head of the field.

Race Day

Woke up Sunday morning and the weather wasn’t great, but I didn’t mind. The only person I was worrying about was Treacy in the Westward engineering Sierra. He had a tough time in the last wet race and although I knew he now had proper wet tyres for this round the damp conditions would lessen the importance of his big power advantage over the Teg! So with all that in mind, coupled with the fact we had decent wets on the car I didn’t mind if it rained. And also, due to our great pace in testing in the dry I was confident enough in those conditions too!

Qualifying

By the time qualifying was about to start it was drying out so I went out on slicks.. I took it handy enough for the first two laps as I was on fresh slicks and wanted to give them a bit of a heat cycle. My lap board showed I was P3 and about 1 second off pole, happy days I thought…I’m not even trying!!!

I put the head down and did a 63.0 and the pitboard showed P1, sensing the track was drying all the time I put in a couple of hard laps and got down to a 61.7. This was about half way through the session so I decided to pit and get a report on who was where. The team told me I was on pole by a big margin so I opted to stay in the pits until someone got close to my time. In the end it looked like I was safe enough so did one lap at the end and consolidating my second pole position of the season.

Race one

The track was wet but drying, I opted to go on wets as did pretty much the entire field except for Tomas O Rourke who took a gamble on slicks. To be honest he was the only one I was worrying about other than Treacy, with the track drying I knew I would have to go hard in the opening laps to build up a lead so that, should the track dry out I would be far enough ahead of O Rourke who would start a charge on his slicks.

I got off the line well and lead into the first corner from the Sierra. I pushed hard for the first lap and opened up a 2 second lead and was driving well within myself. Then about 5 laps in a red flag came out for an incident with Chris O Connor which left him stranded on the track with only 3 wheels under his Peugeot

The grid was reformed but I was getting worried as the track was really drying out and in the dry the Sierra would destroy me off the line and O Rourke was right behind me on his slicks. Luckily I once again got the jump and lead into the first corner. Repeat of the first start, pushed hard on first lap or two…built up a lead and was driving well within myself with one eye on Treacy and one eye on O Rourke who was slipping back…..All going to plan so far!!

Then came a safety car!!

The safety car quickly gave way to a red flag and I was convinced at this stage that the race would be called a result. But no, we had to go AGAIN..

Once again lead into the first corner, built up a lead and was coasting. Then with 2 laps to go as I came down the pit straight I looked in my mirror to see a ploom of white smoke. I immediately killed the engine, pulled in and stormed off….only stopping to deploy the extinguisher to put out the fire that my brother (and plenty others) in the grandstand roared to tell me about!!

Race over, and championship hopes literally up in smoke as championship leader Treacy in the Sierra took the victory

Between Races

The car was towed back to the Tuning Factory Truck in the paddock and the damage assessed. The cause of the smoke was nothing more than the oil filter getting loose and spilling oil directly onto the hot exhaust. Thankfully, I had seen the smoke early and turned off the engine and though it dropped a good bit of oil there was still plenty in the engine and everything looked good. The engine was cleaned down, the filter tightened back in place and we were good to go for race 2. Although, we would be starting well down the pack!

Race Two

As I retired so near to the end I was still classified as a finisher and that coupled with the reverse grid format meant I lined up 10th on the grid for race two. As we were about to assemble for the race dark clouds were gathering. I made the call to go on slicks as did a lot of people. On the outlap I changed my mind and came into the pits hoping to change onto wets and start from the pitlane…In the end there wasn’t time so I stayed on the slicks and started dead last. I went hard from the start and caught the pack by the end of lap one. I went all the way around the outside in turn one and looked to have passed about 4 cars in one go – things were looking good. Then I got tagged by the red and silver 306 who spun me right off the track and into Tom Fahy who then hit the barrier. I was NOT impressed. I ended up stopped in a puddle in the middle of the first rallycross turn. At the time I didn’t even know I hit poor Tom and I just grabbed first gear and took off again.

Immediately I could feel something wasn’t right. I thought it was a puncture and I was about to retire, but I decided to keep going and hope I could at least get a couple of points which could be important come the end of the year. The steering wheel was a full half turn out of alignment and it took two hands to keep the car in a straight line..I struggled on and managed to work my way back up to take 6th at the line in a very battered car

All in all it wasn’t a good weekend for us, but we were lucky not to end up with a blown engine or a written off shell. The good news is that the Tuning Factory/Race DNA and Hankook supported car is easily one of the 3 fastest cars in the series and with a bit of luck on our side we can take a victory or two before the season is out.

My favourite race weekend of the year is next, the historic Phoenix Park motor races on August 14/15. Last year we lead a field of Porsches and Lotus until the rain eased. This year we are out for wins and nothing less!!