Andy Molsom admits that this season in the Caterham Graduates Racing Club’s SigMax class is proving more difficult than he imagined.
Molsom, who is used to challenging for the championship, has struggled in the opening rounds of this year’s series after making a jump up in class over the close season.
Races at Oulton Park and Cadwell Park have so far seen the Spalding speedster take lowly finishes of 18th, 17th and 12th after suffering with breakages and set-up problems.
The opening round at Oulton saw Molsom race in freezing temperatures and frequent snow blizzards in his new car, which was a challenge for everyone.
Qualifying saw Molsom out in changeable conditions. It started out damp before drying a little until the snow came.
He could only manage a disappointing 17th and 19th, with Molsom never quite getting to grips with the car.
After the first race, where Molsom couldn’t improve on 17th, it was found that the limited slip differential was broken, which explained some lack of pace.
This was changed for the second race, but a standard differential was the only replacement to hand in the short time between races.
The second race saw Molsom finish 18th as he struggled to get the power down without the benefit of the limited slip differential.
At Cadwell Park in rounds three and four, Molsom was struggling with oversteer in the car, which was difficult to eradicate with limited testing time.
Changing the set-up for the second race gave Molsom his best race finish of 12th, but the car was still difficult to control and further work needs to be done ahead of the next rounds at Silverstone this weekend.
Molsom said: “This year is going to be a bigger challenge than I expected, the new car needs a slightly different driving style, and it’s unfortunate we’ve had limited time in the car to get the best out of it.
“At Cadwell, the car was trying to swap ends on the exit of the fast corners, so I couldn’t get out of the corners as fast as I would have liked.
“We are changing the rake of the car ahead of Silverstone, with a view to testing it before the races to improve the balance of the car.”
Silverstone will feature two 30-minute races.
