First Race Win In The USA For Juno

Monday 28th April 2008

Juno Racing USA’s Chris Hall took his first win in class and overall for the Juno Duratec TR250 at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend. The race weekend included sports racing cars from West, Elan, Ligier plus SR3, SR5 and SR8 Radicals and Chris beat them all. Juno was also represented by novice driver David Hubbard in his SS-V6.

In qualifying and in the first sprint race Chris had a mysterious problem with the engine cutting out, which actually cost him his lead in the first sprint race. After much help from Ewan (Juno Racing UK) and Rob Denny (Mountune) it was determined that the oil pressure safety function threshold within the ECU was set too low and was causing the engine to shut down in order to protect it. Confident that the oil pressure was not the problem but a setting within the ECU, the sensor was disconnected for race 2. Hey presto the car ran faultlessly in the second race and Chris dominated.

Due to non finish in race 1, Chris had to start at the back of the grid but made a fantastic start and passed the slower GT cars before turn one. At the very fast turn one Chris was with the Radical’s and in a decisive move he used the high down force capability of the TR250 to go around the outside catching out the leaders off guard. By turn two he was in the lead and away. At the end of lap one Chris was 4 seconds ahead and by the end of the race won by a margin of 42 seconds !! The only two cars that could have possibly challenged Chris was an SR8 Radical that broke down after a few laps and David Hubbard’s Juno SS3-V6 that had moved into 3rd. Unfortunately David had to retire because of a soft brake pedal. To his credit he was putting in some good lap times on very old worn rubber. Some new Avon’s are on their way !!

With a new high specification Juno SS3-V6 arriving soon for Jamie Rand and with David Hubbard’s increasing speed, Juno Racing USA’s Chris Hall is confident of much more success and the interest now shown in the Juno product is extremely encouraging.

“This is a very significant win for us, our first in the USA. For Chris to dominate the way he did in his 250 bhp TR250 against some cars with considerably more power really demonstrates the cars potential. It was unfortunate that the oil pressure engine protection feature cost him the first race. It is a useful function to have as it does protect the engine should there be a genuine problem with the oil pressure. Since the first Juno arrived in the US late in 2007, there has been a good deal of interest. The 4th Juno will be shipped at the end of May and so we are getting some real momentum over there”. said Juno’s Ewan Baldry ” The Americans clearly enjoy their sportscar racing and our involvement with Chris represents a fantastic opportunity to sell some cars and build on the success we are enjoying at home and in Europe”.

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