Triple 8 unhappy about boost reduction

Date published : 01 Jun 2011 - 11:36:43

Triple 8 Engineering boss Ian Harrison does not believe British Touring Car organiser TOCA should have given the normally aspirated cars a rules break ahead of this weekend's Oulton Park round.NA machines have had their minimum weights reduced and turbo cars have been handed a suspended drop of 0.05 bar boost after the turbos dominated at the last two meetings.Harrison, whose successful squad last won the BTCC title with Fabrizio Giovanardi in 2008, switched from NA engines to Swindon turbo units for this season. His lead driver James Nash currently lies third in the standings."I have to admit disappointment that TOCA has again seen fit to penalise the turbocharged cars in the name of equivalency," said Harrison. "I appreciate that they have a difficult job to do in managing the situation given all the politics and games involved but I didn't think that a case to apply further measures had been made at Thruxton last time out."Harrison believes that, despite the turbo cars' obvious advantage in qualifying, the fact that Jason Plato's NA Chevrolet Cruze has won three of the nine 2011 races so far indicates extra changes were unnecessary. "You can look at all the data you want, power curves, torque and top speeds etc. but the data that counts is the race result," he added. "Every team knows how to work the system in terms of masking car performance and the last time I looked I noticed that one particular normally aspirated car had won a third of all the races held so far - a pretty good return particularly so when you bear in mind that the entry is dominated by turbo cars."