Juno Sports Proto – 2.0L Duratec
Craig Fleming had taken a year off from Sportscar racing to compete in Production GTi Championship. The engine now fully rebuilt and re-installed in the Juno by Alex, (Craig’s brother).
Team Fleming have now taken the car to Donington Park for a pre-season shake down in preparation for the BRSCC OSS Championship 2016. Craig from SBD had gone along to update the ECU to the latest software and implement improvements for the test and also carry out some fine tuning of the engine map on track. Additional equipment was added to the MBE9A4 to provide wide band lambda input for the ECU to use to self adjust whilst on circuit. Craig would then check the data throughout the day, carrying out small adjustments sending data back to the workshop for Steve to verify. Upgrades to the power shift software allowed for smoother and quicker gear changes.
In general the test went very well, particularly due to the fact that it was the first time for the car and Craig together for over a year and Craig is looking forward to the beginning of the race season.
Email received from Craig in June 2014:
‘On purchasing our Juno Sports Proto, it already had a 250BHP specification Duratec fitted, however we quickly realised that to get to the front of Class B in the BRSCC OSS Championship we were going to need to develop the car and part of this was a re-think on the engine. We approached SBD with our requirements for a high specification Duratec. Having purchased the engine we encountered some problems caused by the packaging of the engine in such a car but have worked with SBD to overcome these and it has resulted in us running at the front of our Championship.
SBD work on ‘V8 kills’ in their sprint championship and we like to try and achieve the same beating the unlimited Class A cars in our championship. In the 16 races we have competed in we have won 8 outright and won our class on 12 occasions with 12 outright pole positions. Our quest to keep improving things continues, but having an engine that on the Dyno produces exactly what we were told it would is certainly key to our progress.’
Email received from Craig Fleming in May 2013 about his Duratec powered Juno, which he uses for circuit racing. The race was televised on Motors TV:
‘Hi Steve
Just a quick line to say we had our first races of 2013 yesterday at the Motors TV meeting at Castle Combe. We qualified 2nd for the first race and Pole for the second race and managed to win both. The first race was scrappy on my part but the second race we put on a proper display.
The motor is mega and thus far has done exactly what you said it would. It has been a massive part of us knocking 3 seconds off of our lap time at Combe and only being 2 tenths of off the lap record. I wanted to thank yourself, Craig and all at SBD for your help and patience and hopefully you may get some enquires from it as there were certainly a few people looking at our car. The water temperature is one of the things that has impressed Alex the most, it pretty much sits at 74 degrees all race and yesterday was hot!’
