EU-GT3: Jarama: Marc VDS event summary

NO RACE FOR MARC VDS MUSTANG IN JARAMA

The wonderful Mustang of the Marc VDS Racing Team has not participated in the third round of the FIA GT3 Championship, this weekend in Jarama. Even though Maxime Martin and Eric De Doncker had set the third time in qualifying, the car had to stay in the box due to a problem with the homologation papers.

The Spanish weekend had taken a great start: during free practice and qualifying Maxime Martin had set the third time overall, only 89 thousands of a second down on the quickest time. That could have resulted in a great race... if there had not been a slight problem with the homologation of the car.

"After qualifying the technical scrutineers of the FIA dissected our car", Eric De Doncker explains. "And they found that the anti-roll bars were not the same as those mentioned on the homologation sheet. We were flabbergasted, because we have been using the same anti-roll bars since the beginning of the season. Together with the scrutineers we studied the problem and we discovered that the measurements mentioned on the homologation sheet are completely wrong. The proof that we had no wrong intentions was given by the fact that the anti-roll bars on the homologation sheet could not even be put on the car, since they are too large!"

There is only one way to solve this bizarre problem, and that is correcting the homologation sheet. Unfortunately this is not possible during a race meeting, there is a whole administrative procedure to be followed...

"So we were caught between a rock and a hard place", Eric De Doncker continues. "Or we drove with the bars that were on the car, because there were no others available and the ones from the homologation could not be put on the car. But that would have given us a FIA report by the scrutineers. So we left the car in the garage, even though that broke our heart..."

Especially since the weekend had started so well. "Indeed", De Doncker confirms. "Since Brno the team has been working very hard, also thanks to the engineers from Bosch, who helped solve our ABS problems. Al those efforts should have been rewarded by a great result. But we can try again in Paul Ricard in two weeks' time, after we cut through all the red tape..."

-source: marc vds