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A View From The Driver's Seat: What we've been doing ahead of Oulton Park!

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 31 May 2013

It's been four weeks since our last outing at Thruxton and instead of sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the next round of the British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park to come round, we have been busy.

Dave providing feedback to the team

It's clear to us all that we have been a little off the pace in the first three rounds and we are really disappointed that we haven't been able to do more for the most important people - you, our fans and sponsors. We needed to develop quickly and so we went testing to try and bridge the gap to the front-runners.

Last week, Speedworks Motorsport really went for it and exclusively hired the Pembrey circuit in South Wales. Team-mate Ollie Jackson and I completed a large programme of set-up changes and trials to our Toyota Avensis cars. We both tried different set-ups and settings and at the end of the day we brought all we had learned from both cars and bolted it to my car. The car was transformed! It was doing everything I wanted from a BTCC car and so much better than the car we had been driving in the first three rounds. I was both shocked and delighted. What a difference! I have to thank Ollie, Alan Mugglestone and the boys for a great team effort.

Preparing the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis for testing

Yesterday we completed our second day of testing - this time at Donington Park. This was a general test with lots of different cars on the circuit including old F1 cars, classic sports cars and Le Mans type GT racers. More importantly, there were also BTCC cars we could compare ourselves to. There was Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden in the 'works' Hondas, Aron Smith and Mat Jackson in their Motorbase Ford Focuses (should that be Foci?), Nick Foster in the eBay Motors BMW 125i M Sport and the Toyota Avensis of Adam Morgan present.

We started with the set-up we finished with at Pembrey and, thank God, we are happy to report that the car still feels great. This was a big relief, as it could have been a set-up that only worked at Pembrey. We were very quick in the morning which was very wet. This is a mixed blessing as we had so much grip, we might do a rain dance next week - don't worry, we won't! In the afternoon when Donington finally dried, we were still optimistic about what we have achieved in the tests, so let's move on.

Testing in the wet at Donington Park

It is certainly fair to say that we have under-achieved so far this season but I have a feeling that this is about to change. Don't get me wrong, this season's BTCC is probably the most competitive it's been for a long time, if not ever, so beating the leading teams will still be a struggle but we have certainly closed the gap. So we will see you at Oulton Park next weekend, June 8th and 9th, I hope. Please come and say hello as it's you, the fans, who make my weekend the great event that it is for me.

Thank you.

Dave #17

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