Stage 2 Motorsport held an impressive launch event at Twin Ring Motegi on Wednesday night to announce their entry in the upcoming TORA GT Championship. They used the evening to fully release all details regarding their first major entry since joining TORA recently. As is the norm with S2M they have decided to use one of their satellite teams during the GT series, Cobblepop Motorsport, and have enlisted 4 of their frontline drivers:-

#523 - S2M Coblet
#530 - S2M Gregbie
#505 - S2M Jono
#959 - S2M SECR3T

During the event I managed to have a quick chat to Cobblepop Motorsport's Team Chief, Mike Rotch. He seemed to be feeling extremely positive about the upcoming series saying "I'm feeling extremely positive about the upcoming series. We have made a positive start by managing to secure a deal with TORA and BMW to run the BMW Z4 GT3. Cob, Jono and Secr3t tested all of the available cars recently and to a man they wanted to run with the Z4". When asked about the car development process Mike added "well we thought we were doing ok until Jono ran in the recent official TORA test session. Although Jono is by no means a front running driver he tends to be able to hold his own but on the night ATR DAN from ATR Dynamics really showed us how fast the Z4 can be. We did consider drafting in a driver to replace Jono but we had already ordered the 100 boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts that he'd demanded as part of his contract negotiations".

The first item on the agenda during the presentation was to announce the title sponsor which is Breitling. Nora Gretz, Breitling European PR Manager, stated "since Leon Breitling founded the company in 1884 we have been synonymous with being at the front of the pack in whatever endeavour we take part in. As such we expect to be seeing our car near the front of the field when the series starts. I must admit there were some Director level meetings after the recent test session to discuss looking for an alternative team. Unfortunately the cars were already being painted and the contracts were water-tight. Thankfully, Mike Rotch has assured me that the pace of the car will improve and once the other drivers start running we will see a drastic improvement.......I hope he's right!".

I can honestly report that I have never heard such a gasp when the car was revealed and Mike was quick to highlight the man responsible for the awesome paint job "once again S2M Ranger has amazed us with the quality and attention to detail he's put in to this livery. We definitely don't want to give off an aura of form over function but we take great pride in making sure our cars look as good as they are fast........going by this paint the car should definitely fly".

After the formailities were out of the way we were treated with seeing the car turn a couple of gentle laps around the West circuit at Motegi. Thankfully our trusty photographer Bill Ding managed to get a couple of snaps:-


Unfortunately, after a couple of gentle laps, S2M Jono decided to show what the Z4 was capable of but when he gave the car full throttle down the main straight things didn't go well. To my untrained ear it sounded like the car over-revved before dying in a cloud of smoke.


As I walked past the garage I managed to overhear Tim Burr, Cobblepop's Head Mechanic, saying the following "It's that damn Stan Still, he's absolutely useless. I asked him to check the rev limiter and he's obviously not done it - if I could get him to move I'd tell him to sling his hook!".

Hopefully the car will be repaired in time for further testing prior to the next TORA GT practice session. It's fair to say that Cobblepop Motorsport are likely to be an interesting addition to the TORA GT ranks, if not for their performances then definitely for their newsworthiness.

Keep your eyes on our pages for further reports as we build towards the 1st Round at Silverstone.