EBC-equipped Ford Fiesta racing outfit took to Silverstone for the second leg of the series, once again showing some serious promise
Team Schnell, made up of driver duo Henry Wright and Kevin Glover, are competing in this year’s season of the MSVT Trackday Championship series.
Continuing in the series’ ‘D’ class (that they finished runners-up in last year), the outfit followed the series from Donington Park to Silverstone recently for its second leg.
Team Schnell’s Mk6 Fiesta ST features EBC Brakes Racing’s RP-X pads and USR discs up front and Bluestuff pads with plain discs on the rear.
The team tell us how the weekend went down in Henry’s words below.
“Silverstone: our local track and a place both Kevin and myself are very familiar with, having competed in two previous 24-hour races here, as well as multiple spring races in various championships through the years.
“The weather forecast was ‘non-committal’ to say the least; we opted for a fairly wet setup on the car but left the car with EBC’s RP-X front pads matched with Ultimax discs, which is our preference in dry conditions, and EBC’s Bluestuff pads in the rear.
“Qualifying itself was a very wet, very crowded affair. The grid was at capacity and the National circuit being very short didn’t help with finding space to put in a solid lap. We managed to secure 3rd – a good result given the above conditions.
“Having expected the brakes to be a bit too grabby for the conditions, we were happy to find the modulation was just as confidence-inspiring in the wet. The ABS again wasn’t being too intrusive. Normally in the wet, the ABS works the rear pads extremely hard and causes crumbling, however the EBC Bluestuff items look like new still – zero wedging of the pad itself either, which is impressive for a single-piston calliper setup.
“With work to do in the race and wet conditions to start with again, we opted to be cautious and not risk too much straight away. Waiting for other people to out-brake themselves paid off and we were soon up to 2nd in class having been held up by a group in a higher class, but in slower cars.”
“In the chase for first, it started drying. After the pits, Kev was dicing hard with the APO Motorsport Renault Sport Clio in P1, putting the car in all sorts of shapes into Copse Corner as I watched from the pit wall.
“It’s easy to rotate the car in the brakes with so much confidence and feel. The race was red flagged early due to a big crash and we rolled into the pits into an expected 2nd place finish, along with the fastest lap in the class again. Consistent braking feel and not having to manage overheating issues is a massive enabler when pushing hard and this combo once again showed its dynamic ability.
“However, there was pit stop calamity again as I had pressed the pit limiter button at the wrong line and started the timer too early, thus giving us a short pit stop time by a couple of seconds. With the applied penalty of 1 lap this put us well down the order. Another case of ‘that’s racing’, having been one of the front-running cars again.”
