Mountune ready for expanded programme

Mountune Racing will be heavily involved in the BTCC this season with a possible six car programme with Arena Motorsport and Motorbase Performance.

We spoke to Roger Allen, General Manager at Mountune Racing about how preparations for the 2011 season were going.

TcT: The 2010 season was a pretty good one for Mountune, winning the independents title with Arena in the second season with the Focus?

“Yes, well, it obviously didn’t happen overnight, and when Arena saw us in the middle of 09 and said could we help, we said yes we could, as it was an engine we knew very well – and that enabled us to get going very quickly and produce the first engine in three weeks for the Snetterton meeting last year and gradually chipped away at it.”

“This year (2010) they decided that with the benefit of involvement from Calor they wanted to go LPG. We had done a little work on LPG for Jonathan Palmer’s group – they run all their corporate fleet on LPG…the team were doing it for commercial and performance reasons, so we said yeah, we’ll look into it.”

“Power was the question that was laid at our door all through the season, and it was a little bit frustrating as we had developed the engine hand in glove with TOCA, and we kept rigidly to the regulations that they laid down.”

TcT: This year will be a new challenge supplying engines to both Motorbase as well as Arena, after a strong year with the two Tom’s. How do you see that going?

“They’re a good little pair of drivers (Tom Chilton & Tom Onslow-Cole) and we rate them highly, as is the team – Arena are one of the best teams we’ve ever worked with and we’ve worked with quite a few over the years. Nice and easy, know what they want to do, how they want to do it, and it’s all done in a very calm, efficient way, everyone’s not at everyone’s throat, there’s no hidden politics and that’s good – you can see why they get results, because that’s the way to go motor racing.”

“And Motorbase…everyone here’s got high hopes with Motorbase, everyone knows they can work Dave Bartrum, very straight forward person, very experienced and they’re looking forward to it.”

“We’d hope to see Mat Jackson in one of the seats as Mat drove with us in Super Production Focuses a few years back with GR Motorsport, and obviously Mat, his brother Dan and father Tony run a Ford dealership – and we’re involved with them on our road car side, Mountune Performance. We’ve enjoyed working with Mat and Tony so it’d be good to rejoin them with that association if he’s going to drive for them.” * Confirmed today.

TcT: In 2011 it is somewhat the battle of the engines, with the majority of teams developing new engines and not cars. The biggest rivalry looks set to be between yourselves and Neil Brown Engines, who are developing a new unit for Honda. Do you look forward to the challenge?

“We know Neil very well, we’ve known him for a long long time…so it’s going to be good times I think. Neil will produce a good engine, no doubt about that – they’re a very good company, so we relish the prospect, it’s going to be good fun. We’d like to think we’ve got a bit more experience banked with turbos which might give us the edge early on.”

“I’m sure Steve Neal and Neil (Brown) will put a very good package together, that’s going to be one to watch. They’ve got good drivers as well, Dave has worked with Matt before on the Nissan programme, and we’ve worked with Gordon in the Focus days – they’re going to be good, it’s got all the makings of a classic year.”

TcT: As you say, you’ve got experience banked with turbo engines from 2010, but how much of the 2010 S2000 turbo engine can you carry over to the NGTC engine?

“The NGTC turbo is very similar to the turbo we were running last year…the plenum is exactly the same, apart from the injector position is different, with the NGTC we’re injecting into the plenum lid actually, so the lid has changed, the cylinder head has to be un-machined, so a different cylinder head as opposed to a standard cylinder head.”

“The piston rod is a slightly heavier rod, same crank, same piston, same engine management system, so in a nutshell, not a great deal of change. Obviously brand new calibration, we’ve tested already at Brands and gave us a big thumbs up.”

TcT: One of the challenges this year is an increased number of cars, possibly six from two, and two different team’s to deal with. How will that work?

“We’ll be building five engines in the pool, Mike (Earle, Arena) and Alan (Cole, Arena) are talking about running three cars. We’re supplying five engines to Bartrum (Motorbase) and five engines to Mike Earle so that’s kind of where it’s at.”

“We’ll obviously be servicing both teams and we’ll have the service team’s completely separate so as far as we’re concerned they’ll be two different set-ups with the same equipment. When you’re running a lot of cars you need to be very diplomatic, so both Arena and Motorbase will have their own dedicated teams from us.”

Mountune Racing will also be present at the Autosport International Show at Birmingham’s NEC this weekend.