Balfe's Saleen S7R at Donington
The Balfe Motorsport team got its 2006 season off to a successful start yesterday as Shaun Balfe took to the wheel of the fully rebuilt Saleen S7R at Donington Park.
The test was the first time the car has turned a wheel since just before Christmas. A handful of exploratory laps turned into just over 60, with the team more than pleased with the day.
“The car ran faultlessly all day. We’re really pleased to get off to a good start with it,” said Balfe. “We made a cautious start and we were hampered in getting some longer runs as there were a lot of red flags during the day. But, our objective was to make sure that everything we have done over the winter worked and we came away from the day more than happy with the results,” he added.
From the first lap Balfe was more than impressed with the improvements the team has made to the car and he was also impressed with the performance of the carbon brakes, after stepping up from the GT2 class Mosler.
“On the first lap out of the pits everything felt really good,” he said. “It took some time to get used to the brakes, especially as when we tried the car before Christmas it was hard to get any heat into anything. It’s certainly an area that you can gain a lot of time over lap and it was certainly an eye opening experience today. We just have to get more miles on the car and start to get it sorted set-up wise now. That’s the next plan for the team, we’ve got a lot of things to work through now that we’ve got the car back together the way we wanted it.
The team will now move on to an exclusive day on the Silverstone south circuit next week to put more miles on the car and give Jamie Derbyshire his first drive of the Saleen. After that, it will be two days at Dijon for the FIA GT media/test days.
“We’ve noticed that the Saleens that have been at the high profile tests so far this year (Zakspeed and Oreca) have been right on the pace so we are looking forward to getting to grips with the car and going up against some big names during the season,” added Balfe.
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