RML upgrades World Touring Car Championship Chevrolet Cruzes
RML has introduced a performance upgrade for its Chevrolet Cruze customer teams ahead of the World Touring Car Championship's end of season Asian rounds
The Cruze started the year as the next most competitive car behind the dominant factory Citroen C-Elysees, but rivals Honda and Lada have made gains.
Campos, one of three Chevrolet WTCC customer teams along with ROAL and Munnich, flew a car back during the break between Termas de Rio Hondo and the forthcoming Beijing Goldenport event to evaluate the developments, with regular driver Dusan Borkovic testing at Barcelona.
"I do not expect the other manufacturers have spent all summer by the pool but the gains we have seen have translated on the stopwatch," said Mark Way, head of design at RML.
"Due to the track configuration, I expect them to show [better] at Shanghai than Beijing."
Munnich Motorsport driver Gianni Morbidelli is the only non-Citroen driver to have won a race this season, in round three at the Hungaroring, and the ex-Formula 1 driver also took pole position at the Salzburgring.
The relative lack of testing and resources in comparison to factory-funded competitors is cited by Way as a key factor in the recent change of competitive order.
"We have three great customer teams but they have limited resources and budget and we are not a works backed programme," he said.
"We don't have a test car or development budget. Testing outside of a race weekend has been limited and therefore the optimisation phase of the programme has been slow.
"Optimising a race car during and for a specific race weekend is one thing, developing a race car over a race weekend is another."
Further technical upgrades are planned for 2015, where time is expected to be less pressing than the compressed initial build schedule of the first TC1 cars.
RML designed, manufactured and delivered six TC1 Chevrolet Cruzes in 22 weeks at the start of this season.
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