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Statement regarding Bio-Ethanol Aston Martin DBRS9 in British GT

23rd July 2007 (Source: Barwell Motorsport )

During the course of the last few Avon Tyres British GT Championship events, the success of the Bio-Ethanol Aston Martin DBRS9 of Paul Drayson/Jonny Cocker has led a number of other teams and various parties to question whether this car has a performance advantage over its petrol-fuelled equivalents. In response to this, Barwell Motorsport would like to make the following comments:

The Bio-Ethanol car is allowed to compete in the Championship by SRO and the MSA-sanctioned regulations on the basis that it cannot be allowed to produce more performance than the petrol DBRS9. Barwell Motorsport (the entrant) and Aston Martin Racing (the manufacturer) have to demonstrate this to the satisfaction of the Championship scrutineers. The scrutineers are entitled to carry out tests, and have access to technical data, in order to satisfy that this car is in compliance with the technical regulations.

Because this is an important and new project, and was bound to raise such questions if successful, we are happy to be transparent with regards to technical information regarding the performance of the Bio-Ethanol car. The team has made available to the Championship scrutineers directly comparable performance data from both the Bio-Ethanol and petrol fuelled DBRS9 GT3 cars. We have also made it clear that we are happy to allow the scrutineers access to directly comparable data from these cars immediately following an official British GT qualifying session and race. In this way, the Championship officials, and our rivals, can be completely satisfied that the Bio-Ethanol car has no performance advantage over the petrol DBRS9.

We would like to reiterate that the purpose of the Bio-Ethanol project is to demonstrate that an alternative-fuelled racing car can be competitive against its petrol equivalents, with the only advantage being to the environment.

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