WRC: Wilcock promises further improvements

Steve · Aug 25, 2011

Wilcock Promises Further Improvements (minimotorsport.com)

24 August 2011
Dave Wilcock, Technical Director of the MINI WRC Team, reflects on his team's journey to a podium position at Rally Germany. He also speaks about his focus on the 2013 season.

Hi everybody,

We canâ€™t help but be satisfied with this result of only our third rally. Getting a podium here in Germany was something special for the whole team. A lot of work has gone into this project and we have realised this weekend it is 11 months to the week since we ran the MINI John Cooper Works WRC for the first time in Portugal. It seems a long time ago when you consider just what we have done in mileage, but it is a great effort in a relatively short time.

Looking back at the weekend, right from the shakedown we knew we were in a good position. We felt the car was competitive on tarmac as all our testing up to now has shown us that. But obviously until you get the numbers on the doors you really donâ€™t know.

On day one unfortunately the rally very quickly became split into two thanks to the weather and the Michelin tyre choice. Citroenâ€™s decision to start on soft tyres, while the rest of us started on the hard ones, was the right one for the morning loop and they took a couple of minutes out of everybody. This meant there were two races going on, one between the works Citroens and then the rest of us. This meant our fight was with the Fords, and what we needed to do was see if we were competitive against them and the great news is we were.

As on the first day there were not that many top crews having problems, it took a little while to show out speed, but we were level pegging with the Ford and able to race them comfortably . We take that as a real positive. We now need to switch that over onto the gravel, but at the moment we shall keep our focus on the tarmac as we have another two rallies on this surface coming up.

We have learnt a lot this weekend. The MINI is a fantastic little car on tarmac. It is very sensitive and very driveable in changing conditions and sensitive to changes. The drivers have the ability to tune it to their liking so that is a real attribute. The nice thing is our customers who are rallying it are also saying the same, so there is another strong positive.

We know our strengths and also our weaknesses. We know where we have to work and we will do that as we have a clear plan. We will go away from here now and will work out a priority order and start attacking them. We are a small team but we are committed and will do everything we can to improve as much as we can. We have short term objectives with some performance and some reliability. However, we have a clear focus and that is on 2013 and we are now going to stick to that and work to our calculated development plan.

Yours,

Dave
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Justa Jim · Aug 25, 2011

You da man Steve.

Jim

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