Thursday the 28th of February 2008 saw the Britcar press launch and the first test session / outing at Silverstone race circuit for the Xero Competition Corvette C5R. SinVision and Graham Collins from www.corvetteracing.co.uk were on hand to report on the launch of the Corvette C5R at Britcar.  

Xero Competition is a leading motor racing team based in Cheshire in the North West of England, United Kingdom. They are known most recently for the GT Corvettes which they have run in British GT and selected Belcar, Rhino's GT and other European GT/Endurance racing events from 2003 until 2006.

Report from Graham Collins:- Preparations had progressed during the winter for the 2008 season, but had suffered a last minute problem with a crack in the gearbox casing resulting in it's return just 24 hours before before the test day. Despite this, Dave Beecroft and his Xero Competition staff had the car ready to roll and after a few early adjustments (a weld to the exhaust among others) Mitch set about putting some miles onto the car although the team were running restricted to 5500rpm, so there is plenty more to come during future test sessions.

Co driver, Alan Bonner flew down from Edinburgh for the session and quickly settled into the car, although, like Mitch, was itching to get at the restricted rpm. A few battery problems left the team with several pit lane bump starts, but this was among only a few minor issues the team had to contend with and as the day was coming to a close, everything had gone to plan.

"Just one of those things" commented Mitch, who did well to hide his disappointment "we'll be back out at Donnington, hopefully next week and should have unrestricted power, which will be fun". 

Xero Competition did a quick damage assessment as the car was lowered onto the team truck's ramps and this revealed a broken steering rack among rather more obvious cosmetic damage.

Mitch went on to say "With regard to the car itself, I was actually very pleased with the test. With the car being so new, I was very happy that other than shedding a secondary belt, it otherwise ran true to form."

"Given we were still a long way off the peak performance of the car, I'm happy that we can make her competitive for the season. The handling was great and will be improved further as we develop setups around Alan and myself."

"Our driving styles are very different to Ricky and Peter who raced it in British GT and it makes a world of difference. Other than the ending to the day, I'm feeling pretty upbeat and keen to get back out testing."

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