Barwell Motorsport will start the 2007 British GT Championship amongst the front-runners for the title with a potent looking driver line-up for its trio of Aston Martin DBRS9s.
The team has already grabbed some early headlines with the news that one of the cars will run on bio-ethanol this season, with
Crash.net Radio speaking to team boss Mark Lemmer to find out more…
Q:
It’s bio-ethanol for one of your cars this season, what’s the thinking behind bringing alternative fuels in the British GT Championship?
Mark Lemmer:
Paul Drayson, who drove for Barwell last year with the Aston in British GT, and myself were discussing issues over the winter and we are both family men, both have kids and have the environment as something we are keen to protect. We talked about the possibilioty of running Paul’s car on bio-ethanol and thought it was an excellent idea. We spoke to Aston Martin Racing and there were no problems from a technical point of view, so between ourselves and Aston Martin Racing we have developed the car to run on bio-ethanol and are delighted to be the first British GT car to be running on a renewable fuel.
Q:
How much work has to go in to converting the DBRS9 to run on bio-ethanol?
Mark Lemmer:
A fair bit of work. It needs a completely new fuel tank installation, we have to run a slightly bigger capacity tank, we have to re-spec fuel lines, injector sizes, injector rates, fuel pump delivery, all the refuelling equipment has to be changed and the fuel has different properties so the seals have to be compatible – so everything that has a rubber seal has to be compatible with the new fuel. Really, it is fairly involved but I think it is important that leading teams like ourselves understand this technology because we need to find ways of bringing sustainable and renewable source fuels into motorsport and if we understand the technology then we can embrace that and run more cars on it.
Q:
How vital is a partnership with EEMS in a programme such as this?
Mark Lemmer:
It is a win-win situation really. They have been very helpful with us in terms of supplying information so that we can understand the technology quicker than we would have done otherwise, but also we are profile and can help promote Energy Efficient Motor Sport to the masses. We have a high media profile and have a responsibility to do that. It is very good working in conjunction with them.
Q:
In performance terms, how does it affect the car?
Mark Lemmer:
Performance has to be regulated so we have had the car on the dyno and have got comparable figures to our petrol car. We run a homologated compression ratio in the
FIA GT3 category, therefore that limits the amount of power we can get from the bio-ethanol fuel. If we were allowed free limits in compression ratio, we could achieve more with that but unfortunately we aren’t allowed to do that in this category. But we know we should be competitive, we just need to do some testing to make sure we are reliable.
Q:
In terms of the driver line-up for the new season, it’s looking very strong. You must be pleased with the line-up assembled.
