The Oaktec Civic Hybrid at the Jim Clark Rally. Click to enlarge.

Oaktec has entered the 1339 cc Civic in the final round of the BARC Dunlop Sport Maxx Cup, having identified this production series as the one most suited to the Group N spec hybrid saloon. Oaktec believes the Civic is the first hybrid car to race in the UK. It will be driven Jamie Corstorphine from Autocar magazine and Gavan Kershaw, chief chassis engineer from Lotus Cars.

Oaktec invited Kershaw to pilot the car to coincide with the beginning of its technical partnership with Lotus Engineering, which is assisting with the development of the Honda Hybrid for its race and rally applications. The joint project has gained funding support from the North West Development Agency and will concentrate on extracting performance from the electrical side of hybrid package by focussing on battery technologies, energy flow and system control in order to gain performance without the penalty of increased emissions and fuel consumption.

The competition will help the partnership gather data on the performance of the car in the relatively predictable conditions of a circuit race. The data gathering expertise will be provided by Warwick University, another long-term partner in the project.

We will fit instrumentation to the car to measure the energy flows to and from the batteries. A race circuit provides a much more consistent background than a rally stage to gain objective data. Most of the cars the Civic will be racing against are in the more powerful classes so we are not expecting to be in the top five in this event, but we have tested the car on a circuit and it has plenty of grip and balance. If we get the car to the end of the race and gather some useful information then it will be job done!

—Paul Andrews, Oaktec

The Rockingham race lasts 45 minutes with a mid-distance driver change. The Civic will compete without compromising its low emissions status and will also be driven to and from the race.

The Civic Hybrid was developed by Oaktec as part of a project looking at energy recovery technology in motorsport, backed by EEMS, the Energy Efficient Motorsport program.