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A View From The Driver's Seat: Donington Park review - Progress and disappointment in equal measure!

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 24 april 2013

Following the 2nd meeting of the season, Speedwords Motorsport driver Dave Newsham shares his thoughts on the events of Donington Park.

Dave has his eyes on the silverware at Thruxton

After a fairly difficult practice session, lots of changes were made to the car during the sessions to try and get a set-up we were happy with. Finishing the session P6 with only works cars ahead of me I was pretty happy. Mind you, I had a big panic during our pre-qualifying briefing when we discovered we had a broken front suspension. The dilemma was, were all the changes made to the car during the session helping, or masking the breakage? Were the broken parts helping, or hindering? Not an ideal situation heading into qualifying.

On my first flying lap, heading down Craner Curve, a car in front of me lost control, shooting across the grass and re-joining the circuit directly in front of me! Scrub that lap! Next lap, heading down Craner again and another car ahead had gone off at the Old Hairpin, another lap scrapped. The next was clean and feeling really fast. Nope, half a second slower than my practice lap. With only 10 minutes remaining and in P16, the team decided to make a big change to the car to replicate the broken part of Free Practice. With only time enough for two flying laps, I had to make them count. Not great laps and the handling of the car was not great either, but it was enough to elevate me to P9.

Dave during Free Practice at Donington Park

My plan for race 1 was to finish at all costs! Making a good start, I spent the first couple of laps staying out of trouble. I had a great battle with Colin Turkington, however as the race developed and still in 9th, I was pulling clear of the cars behind me but struggling to stay with Colin and the cars ahead. Finishing a comfortable 9th and scoring good points, I couldn't help being disappointed. After the engineers looked through the data and hearing my feedback, big changes would be made to the car for race two.

In race 2, after making a good start and in mind of staying out of trouble again, I noticed that the car felt quite different. I have to say that it took me a few laps to learn and trust it. Once I did, I found myself all over Turkington again - this time with a much faster car. Also dicing with Sam Tordoff in the works MG, Colin was using all of his substantial experience to hold us both off with me and Sam swapping places every couple of laps. On lap 12, Sam found a way past Colin and left a hole large enough for me too. For the remaining six laps, both me and Sam were among the fastest cars on circuit. Sam seemed to have more straight line speed, so I couldn't find a way past, finishing on his rear bumper in 7th place. That's better, I told the guys as I came in.

On the edge in the qualifying session at Donington Park

For race 3 and with the reverse grid draw, I found myself 4th for the start. With another tweak to the set-up too, we were very confident going into race three. Another solid start saw me easily holding station in 4th and challenging for 3rd. On lap four, I lunged down the inside of Tom Onslow-Cole's VW into Redgate but he got a slightly better exit and we were side by side heading down Craner Curve! Then suddenly there was a big bang and I found myself sliding down the track completely sideways coming to rest in the centre of the track with the 27 car field going both sides of me. The sight of cars hurtling towards me at 130mph is a sight I never want to see again. God only knows how everyone missed me, but thankfully they did. Once the field had passed, I realised why the car had snapped violently sideways. One of my rear wheels was pointing left as a tow link had broken on impact with Onslow-Cole's car. I don't blame Tom, it was a freak accident. His rear wheel hit my rear wheel and would have had to hit in exactly the right place to break it like it did. An inch either side and we would have been fine! That's just the story of our season so far!

There are a lot of positives we take away from Donington - we learned a lot more about the car and the team more about what I like the car to do. Race 2 was very satisfying as we were one of, if not the, fastest car on the track in clear air. In race 3 I am convinced that we would have come close to or achieved a podium. The team and the car really are that good - it seems to have been luck that has let us down so far. I am looking forward to Thruxton in 2 weeks as I love the track and I think that we have moved closer to me and the car being in perfect harmony. I will see you all at Thruxton on the 4th and 5th of May and we'll see what we can do to bring some silverware to the team!

Dave #17

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