Craft-Bamboo Racing completes successful four day test at Portimão

Craft-Bamboo Racing has just finished four days of intensive testing at the Portimão Circuit in Portugal, completing over 1000km of test mileage. The comprehensive test program is to help prepare for the Moroccan round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship, which will see Grégoire Demoustier once again take to the track in his Eurodatacar-liveried Chevrolet Cruze.

The car was air-freighted directly from Argentina to Portimão, with Craft-Bamboo Racing the only privateer team to undertake pre Marrakech testing. Conditions on track were punishing as the mercury nudged 50 degrees Celsius, while the factory backed teams had multiple drivers to share the workload, it was up to Demoustier to carry out the entire test mileage himself. This allowed him to gain crucial time behind the wheel and explore the car’s handling and performance characteristics in depth.

I improved my driving, especially my start which is going to help a lot for the rest of the season.

Grégoire Demoustier

With the main focus of the test to give Demoustier an increased amount of early season mileage, the team was using six sets of tyres per day to cover the extensive distances. While Demoustier was busy on track, the engineering team was busy monitoring and validating the results of the four-post rig test that was conducted in the UK early last week.

Throughout the test period, the engineering team ran through a comprehensive test program which was aimed at collecting data for a variety of race configurations. Testing a variety of setups, changes were made to springs, dampers, differentials, ride height and suspension geometry, with the aim of extracting increased performance and driveability for the upcoming round in Morocco.

The entire test period was conducted without a single incident and Demoustier has become more familiar with the FWD touring car’s characteristics thanks to his extended seat time. He has received positive feedback from the engineering team and has shown a steady improvement in his own lap times.

The Craft-Bamboo Racing team will complete another two days of testing at the Circuito Guadix in Spain before the second round of the FIA WTCC begins on April 19th at the Marrakech Street Circuit in Morocco. Grégoire Demoustier will be focused on putting in a solid performance to add to the Yokohama Driver’s points he scored in his inaugural WTCC race in Argentina.

Quotes

Grégoire Demoustier: “It was really good to do this test we really needed it and we learned a lot about the car. I improved my driving, especially my start which is going to help a lot for the rest of the season. We still have two days to do in spain next week and I hope we can make more improvements. We still have work to do but we made a big step from where we were in Argentina after having more time on the track.”

Craft-Bamboo Racing