Also Neil Brown has engineered this engine so its going to be a bit more durable. Obviously being a junior class here in F3 the drivers are a little bit less experienced and they’re more likely to make mistakes gear changing and hurt the engines, certainly with the A class engines which were much more highly tuned and they’ve engineered the engine with that in mind so it’s a bit more durable.
Hopefully they haven’t lost too much power and from what we’ve seen today it seems to be very, very similar to the old scholarship class so it should be very interesting.
Crash.Net
There was talk that they’d reduce the weight limit of the National Class cars if the engine was a bit lacking. Do you think they’ll need to do that?
DW
It’s difficult to say at this moment because we haven’t really been pushing the car today. Obviously its just been a systems check this morning and so the afternoon we’ll hopefully push a bit harder.
Reducing the weight isn’t really possible because the cars are very close to the weight limit anyway. You couldn’t reduce them significantly, you know five kilos will not make a difference to the performance.
Neil Brown Engineering tell me that they have got a little bit in hand for performance if they need to tune the engines a little bit higher because at the moment they are very safe and I think they should stick with that. And if there is a performance deficit, Neil Brown could get a little bit more performance out of the engine but I don’t see that as a problem.
Crash.Net
As a team who’ve been faithful to the National/Scholarship class, what are the initial advantages of the engine that you’ve seen that will help bring Performance Racing on next year?
DW
Well you know what your engine costs are going to be at the start of the year, hopefully there will be less of these unforeseen costs with things like engine damage and there aren’t going to be any upgrades coming out through the season, or if there are they’ll be covered by the leasing costs we’ve got anyway. Neil Brown have agreed to freeze the costs for two years with leasing, so that’s very good again from the point of view of introducing new teams.
Crash.Net
SRO has stated that they really want to improve the overall package with the National Class. What are the things you’ve seen which could be a lot better than 2004 in terms of exposure that Performance Racing could get next year?
DW
Well today s a good example. I mean there’s been a massive amount of interest today in this new class and its been very good for us to have the first car out today. What we really need is more teams here and I hope that these fixed costs help.
