Wiborg Engineering at Mantorp Park
A new track record and double wins at Mantorp Park!
Coming back to Mantorp Park circuit this year was gonna be special, this is the “one” track you want to be the fastest car at when it come to Time attack in Northern Europe. Coming of last years race with the new tintop record standing at 1:12.6 it was now time to see what the 2019 spec updates really could deliver.
After setting a new overall track record at Knutstorp earlier this year we knew the car was mega and prior the Mantorp weekend we had Drenth Motorsport Gearboxes deliver us a brand new custom ratio full sequential gearbox as well as some fine tuning to the rear diffuser setup.This time we were not gonna leave anything on the table and it was finally time to release the full potential of the new engine setup for 2019, at least this was what we thought….
Friday - TANU Race
During the warmup there was some electronic issues with the gear cut for the new sequential gearbox where there seemed to be something disturbing the gear lever load signal so the warmup had to be aborted.
For Q1 a “low boost” 2,3 bar setting was used to set a reference time and get a feel for the setup of the car. The gear cut settings were changed in the ECU to try get the gear cut to work, however as the first attack lap was started the ECU had some false gear cuts and Q1 had to be aborted, when reviewing the data logs there was some EMC disturbance occurring when going at high RPMs causing the load cell signal to false trigger the gear cut, this was not gonna be solved during the day since no obvious issue was found in the wiring loom so the gearcut had to be turned off (clutch shift to be used) for now.
For Q2 the issues continued this time with the hood coming loose after one of the attachments were not properly locked in place. The team worked hard to fix the damaged hood and get the car ready for the last heat of the day and manage to just barely make it out on track in time for the final.
The boost still at 2,3 bar and after completing a “step up” lap the first real attack lap was started, coming out of sector 2 out of 3 the split showed us being a massive 1,9 sec down on our 2018 record however coming of the long straight the engine misfired twice and the fuel pressure was on dangerously low levels so the lap was aborted. After returning to the pit the issue was found to simply be a faulty fuel level sensor hence the car had been under fueled and we had simply ran out of fuel with ⅓ of the lap to go.
The spirit in the team however was very high since the first lap of the weekend was a 1:11:8 which meant a new tintop record by 0,8 sec and with the sector times on the second lap in mind there for sure was a low 1.10 in the car and even a sub 1:10:00 time looked possible for the Saturday race
Saturday - King of Mantorp Race
The plan was simple for Saturday, warmup to check that all systems were ok, “medium” 2,6 bar boost for Q1 and new Yokohama Tire tires and “high” 2,9 bar boost for Q2 were the new record should be made, Q3 and shootout was simply as backup if we had issues during the morning.
Heading out in Q1 a warmup lap was done and the attack lap started, coming of sector 1 the time was further improved from yesterday and coming of sector 2 the times again indicated a low 1:10 time however just exiting sector 2 the car made a small jerk as the ignition died.
When the car was rolled into the pits the team immediately realized it was game over. The crank had due to the extreme lateral loads this year started to move sideways (wearing down the bearing), this to a point were the trigger wheel hit the crank sensor which ripped the trigger wheel apart and the pieces tangled up with the cam belt and that was it.
The Unlimited King of Mantorp title was actually still won with the warmup lap time being the best of the day but the team was really gutted since we never got the chance to show the potential of the Evo. We will take the 2 wins and the new track record any day but we had a different goal for the weekend and for the audience that we failed to deliver this time around.
But no worries we will be back and we will hunt the magic sub 1:10.00 time, there is always a next time and a next year.
Now its flat out work to get all custom parts (a lot of prototype parts destroyed) to be able for the car to be battle ready for the next race and break some more records.
