This weekend I have been working with a Peugeot 308 Cup and a Hyundai i30N TCR at the Ricardo Tormo circuit.
We started the weekend with a bad start. On Thursday (assembly day), the selector box failed in the Peugeot 308 when we tried to start it and saw that everything was correct. As a result, we had to be on repairs until 04:00 am.
On Friday, and with the car having started just 5 hours ago, we were ready to go out on track for the first free practice session. The car went out on track and our surprise came from a comment from the driver on the radio saying that the car had no power. He stopped in the pits, we downloaded data and could not identify any faults.
In the meantime, we decided to take him back out on track, when looking at the data from the wall we noticed that there was a pressure differential between the turbo outlet sensor and the intake inlet. The driver stopped again because he said that the problem persisted, so we got down to work to try to solve the problem. We disconnected the sensor and reconnected it, checked that there were no air leaks anywhere, and took the opportunity to get a replacement sensor.
Finally, the driver came back in saying that it was impossible to run like that, so we ended up ending the session to investigate on the car before time.
After checking the whole car, we were testing it in the pit, and it looked like it didn't have any problems. We changed the sensor and the problem ceased to exist, so we were ready to go out for the next free practice.
We just came out of the pits and the driver reported over the radio that he had just got the message that the car had no fuel and was stalling. Obviously, it couldn't be, as we had filled the tank for the session. We tell him to come in if he gets to the pits. When he arrives, we see that an alarm has gone off on the panel indicating that there is low fuel pressure.
We started to look for where the fault could be coming from, we changed one of the pumps and told him to go out on track, but the driver told us that he was still having the same problem. We filled the tank to the top of the tank again in case a vacuum had been created, but the problem was still the same. Without being able to solve the problem, we had to abandon this second practice session as well.
We were testing the car all afternoon after checking the fuel pumps, the lambda sensor, pressure sensors and so on, and at least in the pit it seemed to be going well, so we only had to test it on track.
On Saturday we went straight into qualifying without being able to complete a lap. After having worked until 12 midnight the previous day on the car, we just wanted it to go well. But when we set off, again we get the same problem: the car doesn't run. We decided to try to make a drier mixture, as it seemed to be a bit greasy, to see if we could solve it, but nothing further from the truth.
The car came back to the pits with a lot of smoke: the engine had broken. We had an hour and a half for the first race and almost 4 hours for the second, so we decided to try to change it. The new engine was completely stock, so we had to take out the old one, connect everything to the new engine, and then mount it. The race had already started but there was still the hope of trying to complete 70% of the race to score points. We tried with everything we had, but one of the sensors was not connected. On the pit map it didn't give us any problems, but when it was time to go out on track, the engine went into protection mode and ended up stopping at the end of turn 4.
This was the end of this disaster of a weekend for the Peugeot 308, which was playing for the title with the last race at Montmeló to go, and which is ending with this double 0.
On the other hand, with the Hyundai TCR the weekend went from less to more. In this case, and due to the problems we were having in the 308, I decided to give a hand to my teammate Jordi, who was helping my mechanic with the Peugeot's problems.
In the first free practice he was almost 3s behind the rest, so the driver had many doubts and mistakes in terms of driving.
In the second practice session we started to get into a better rhythm. Correcting the most serious mistakes we had seen, he started to get within 2s of the fastest times in his category.
Looking ahead to qualifying, we tweaked a couple of things in the setup (very simple), to see if we could improve the balance of the car as well as include the new tyres; and it worked. It wasn't Busian's best qualifying, but he himself admitted that the time with that car was very improvable, so we were satisfied with the car's performance.
For the first race Busi moved up to P10 from P14, making a good haul; and for the second race, with a spectacular start, he picked up a fabulous P7. All in all, it wasn't his best weekend but he certainly managed to save the situation very well.
I would like to thank the whole team for the help they gave us to get the Peugeot on track in record time, even though it didn't finish the race. I would also like to thank Jordi for his help with the mechanics of the 308 while he was doing the coverage with the i30N data. Of course, thanks as always to RX Pro Racing, who treat me like home every time I go to work with them.
