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A View From The Driver's Seat: Brands Hatch Review

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 1 April 2013

Dave Newsham reflects on a tough time at Brands Hatch.

On track at Brands Hatch

As I drive back to Inverness today, Monday, I am struggling to get it all out of my head. The positives, the negatives and the sheer strangeness of trying to drive the car in effectively sub-zero temperatures. In our recent testing in Portimao, track and air temperatures were at least 20 degrees centigrade higher and it would be difficult to imagine that we could do a lot more with what is a brilliant car.

Then there was Brands and what can only be described as a trip to the Arctic. Freezing conditions in free practice, a blizzard in qualifying and then the big freeze from Saturday night into Sunday. Sunday was even colder, with the temperature never reaching 2 degrees and an effective temperature of -4 degrees with the wind chill factor. A real baptism of the fire to the season.

Louise Allen from No Fear

The thing that we discovered over the weekend, and I have to say that it came as a bit of a shock to all of us, was that the car is on a real knife-edge when the tyres are freezing cold. It sounds like an excuse, but I can assure you that it isn't. We have never 'cold weather tested' a car before. The extremes of temperature certainly caught a few people out, but my biggest disappointment is for my fans, sponsors and the team who are always my greatest inspiration and I wish we could have done better for you.

The team were brilliant and there were certainly some positives amongst everything else. With heat in the tyres we are as quick as anyone out there, so if we can sort the cold tyre issue we will be right in the mix at the front. After every event, it was back to Christian and the team for a debrief and they immediately set to work reacting to what I was telling them and their own telemetry data. In the end, qualifying in 6th was probably a fair result.

Qualifying at Brands Hatch

Race 1 was unfortunate when, as a result of a cold tyre spin, I had what was only a minor collision, but this resulted in a connector to the alternator coming loose and our race was over. In race 2 we had a spin early on - again on cold tyres and this damaged the rear suspension. When you consider that we could effectively only turn right for the rest of the race, the pace of the car was obvious as we matched the rest of the field for speed. We can forget race 3 when my spin on the cold tyres caused the big crash on Paddock Hill. I really feel for Rob Austin who was unsighted by the BMW and did a fantastic job of avoiding an even bigger crash when faced with me in front of him. Thanks mate - I am so pleased that the damage to both cars wasn't worse.

So where from here? Well, we think that it is highly unlikely that we will encounter such bizarre and extreme weather again this season. Certainly with 3 weeks to go before Donington, the weather has a chance to improve. The team and I are looking closely at the cold tyre issue and we are confident that we can overcome this. So I am putting Brands behind me and looking positively ahead to Donington. I have a great team behind me, a quick car underneath me and I think Donington will show you what we are all about. See you all there I hope!

Dave #17

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