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A View From The Driver's Seat: At last, a race in my own country!

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 27 August 2013

Speedworks Motorsport's Dave Newsham looks back at a troubled visit to his home circuit.

It was a relatively short trip to go racing last weekend as it was our annual trip to Knockhill in Fife, just 140 miles drive from home in my Motorhome. I was up nice and early Saturday morning, the weather was dry but with a hint of drizzle in the air. Could go either way. After the drivers briefing I was soon strapped into my Speedworks Toyota ready for FP1 - free practice one. The idea of practice is to dial the car into the track so we start with our base set-up and adjust the car as we go. Other teams who have had years developing their cars will have a 'Knockhill' set-up, so they would only be fine tuning.

After just a few laps, the car was feeling good and I was towards the sharp end of the timesheets when, braking for turn one at approximately 140mph, there was a crunch from the front of the car. I felt the left front suspension collapse and I was off the circuit, bouncing across the gravel trap then going airborne, nose-diving into the grass the other side of it. My session was over!

After the session had finished, my car was lifted on to the back of a truck and taken back to the team. I was surprised to see that I had finished the session in P9, less than 2 tenths of a second off fastest. On inspection, we saw that the front frame that carries the engine and all suspension components was broken. Reading the faces of my mechanics, it was not good. The team got straight to work, but I was told we would certainly miss FP2 and fingers crossed, they could get it fixed for qualifying - good! A couple of hours later in free practice 2 and I was watching track-side, my BTCC competitors pound round the track. Spectators were giving me strange looks, wondering why I was standing with them and not in my car. The biggest problem was we hadn't even started to dial my Toyota in to this unique track.

As qualifying started, my mechanics where working frantically, still reassembling the car after welding the frame back together. I got myself strapped in ready for the car to hit the ground and I could hear BTCC cars heading to the track. This is not a good feeling, as every second counts in qualifying. The car hit the ground, I fired the engine and headed straight to the track. Lining myself up for my first flying lap, I opened the throttle to put 350bhp to the ground when I heard a 'snap' and I immediately lost drive - a broken drive shaft! I managed to crawl to the pit lane where my boys, still covered in sweat from rebuilding my car, now had to swap the drive shaft. They did a fantastic job and I was back on track with 12 minutes left of the session. On my first run I could feel the car was not handling well and was very unstable. I was lying 18th and needed to find some more pace! My final run pushes me up to P14 and less than half a second from pole position.

After qualifying, the mechanics had time to set the car up properly and discovered the set-up was miles away from ideal so under those circumstances we had done a pretty good job. On Saturday evening I was invited to be a guest on a BTCC panel where fans can ask us questions. Jason Plato, Colin Turkington, Dan Welch and I were fired questions from a packed Knockhill bar. It was great to see the how much love for the sport the fans have, and it was a good laugh too. On Sunday morning we had over 100 guests coming to Knockhill. My manager Mike had his first call at 6:45am from a guest waiting at the gate for his pass. Needless to say Mike actually earned his money this weekend!

Race one: Being such a short circuit with limited overtaking places and the fact most of the grid is running similar pace, starting P14 was going to be tough. Lights out to start the first race and I immediately lost one place to Nick Foster in the eBay Motors BMW whose rear wheel drive cars always start better. I managed to get him back at the end of the first lap to be back where I started. I was now on the tail of Mat Jackson who left a hole just big enough for my car down the inside at the hairpin. I then repeated that move on Tom Onslow-Cole and Frank Wrathall to be in P11. I spent the final laps trying to pass Aron Smith's Ford but he defended well and we crossed the line nose to tail. P11 it was then. After race one we finally had some running data and were able to make changes to improve the car.

Race two: This would prove to be the toughest race of my life! From lap one I realised my car wasn't changing gear like it should. In fact I had to physically man-handle each and every 'up' gear change with all my effort to swap gears, 20 times per lap. Despite this I was making my way forward and all over the back of the works MG of Sam Tordoff however by half distance I was drained. My left arm was dead and I was counting down the laps. I started to drop back from the leading pack and Mat Jackson caught me and passed me relatively easily - I had no energy left to fight. Three cars were catching me - time to dig even deeper and I held on to take P10. I can't describe how exhausted I was. My heart was still beating out of my chest ten minutes later whilst lying behind the team truck, my engineer Allan handing me cloths soaked in cold water to bring my temperature down. The gear lever with all electronic ancillaries was replaced to rectify the fault. By the time race three was here, I was raring to go again.

Race three: Making a great start, I passed two cars on the run to the first corner - P8. The car was handling great after further tweaks. I was all over the back of Jason Plato's works MG. I had a lunge into the hairpin but he saw me coming and closed the door. Lap 10 and as I turned into the first corner, the rear of my car let go. A little shocked, I just managing to hang on to it. Next corner, same again. Something had broken at the rear of my car this time. I headed to the pits. The team inspected the car and found the rear sub-frame had broken this time. Beyond belief!

It seems that we are destined to have a troubled season. I have total belief that the team are doing everything correctly - we are just being incredibly unlucky. I'm not even looking at the championship table any more. With our speed we should be well inside the top ten. I'm sorry but I couldn't tell you where we are right now - I simply haven't looked. It's all about getting racing now, so let's see if we can get this team their first podium, or even a win. I know we can do it and we have nothing to lose! Thank you for your support guys.

Dave #17

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