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BTCC team WSR perplexed by BMWs' straightline speed struggle

WSR does not know what has caused its trio of BMWs to struggle for straightline speed at the opening two British Touring Car Championship rounds of the season

Despite gaining an extra 10bhp since the end of last year the 125i M Sports, driven by Andy Priaulx, Sam Tordoff and Rob Collard, are now further behind in the speed traps.

The rear-wheel drive cars in the series are permitted to run more rear wing in order to keep the car stable in the corners but that, combined with the BMW producing more drag than other models on the grid, hurts it on the straights.

Priaulx went from earning pole at Brands Hatch to qualifying 23rd at Donington, with Brands victor Collard only 19th, while team boss Dick Bennetts put Tordoff's seventh place down to a tow around the entire lap.

"We're a bit unsure what's happened," Bennetts told AUTOSPORT. "Brands we went from 3mph down to 5mph down.

"We've had to take something off the car over the winter. That to us is one of the reasons why.

"I think it's affecting drag. We can't prove it unless we go to a windtunnel."

BALANCING NEEDS MORE WORK

Bennetts says the team does not have the budget to revisit such a facility and he is hoping series officials will re-evaluate its efforts to equalise FWD and RWD.

He argues that depriving the RWD cars of most of their startline advantage and repositioning their ballast boxes has rendered the cars uncompetitive, particularly as the ballast quantities have increased for 2015.

"The weight is a double whammy," added Bennetts. "It helps [stabilise] the FWD cars, and hurts RWD cars' weight distribution.

"They want parity off the line but what about parity on aero drag? The cars vary a lot because of the shape of the bodywork.

"All the fuss about the start, that lasts for five seconds. We've got to race 25 minutes with the difference."

AUTOSPORT SAYS...
Scott Mitchell, BTCC correspondent (@scottmitchell89)

Factors such as track gradient and where the splits are positioned on track make evaluating speed-trap figures tough.

But whichever way you look at the numbers from the opening two rounds, it's mystifying how a car that's benefiting from increased power is slower in a straight line.

Dick Bennetts has a stellar engineering background, so if he's stumped I've got no chance. From an aerodynamic point of view, removing a part could increase drag depending on where it was positioned and how it operated.

Hopefully for WSR, it's something that can be traced and sorted, because relying on a helping hand from TOCA might be futile.

As long as the team has the option of taking off some rear wing, and if its NBE-built BMW engine is deemed to be as strong as the Swindon-TOCA unit, it might just be told to get on with the job at hand.

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