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A View From The Driver's Seat: Silverstone, change and progress!

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 3 October 2013

Following an exciting weekend at Silverstone, Speedworks Motorsport driver Dave Newsham gives us the inside story of changes to his Toyota Avensis and the events of the penultimate meeting of the year.

There have been some personnel changes within the Speedworks team. To cut a long story short, we have moved in a completely different direction with the Toyota Avensis set-up since Rockingham. My initial thoughts were this is exciting and just what we have needed! However I couldn't help myself being nervous as I climbed into a car that looked identical, but under the skin was very different. None of us knew for sure if we had made the car better, or would it be worse?

In Free Practice 1 I headed to the track. My initial reports over the radio where "it's lively" the car was dancing around like it's never done before. Couple of laps in, and my 'new' engineer came over the radio saying we were P2. Lively but quick then! After having several high speed sideways moments, I headed to the pits for some adjustments to calm the car down a little. After these, we finished the session with a lot of ground covered and P2 behind Jason Plato in the works MG. Free Practice 2 saw more ground covered and I was getting more confidence in my new found race set-up and we finished P1. Yes that's right, fastest of the whole 26 car grid!

Qualifying is a funny session as you never know who was sandbagging in practice. Trying not to get carried away, we headed into qualifying thinking top six would be great. We bettered that with P3, just 0.015 off the pole position set by Jason and just behind his team-mate Sam Tordoff. We were very pleased with that!

And so to race day and race 1. Making a good start, it still wasn't good enough to keep the fast starting rear wheel drive BMW of Colin Turkington behind me, however I made a great turn two and was alongside Sam and moving past Colin for second. Being on the outside for the next turn, I left my braking as late as possible to try and get around Colin, however my rear tyres were not hot enough for what I was about to put them through and as I entered the corner they let go of the tarmac sending me into a spin. Without making excuses, this is one of the downsides of driving a completely different car set-up - it takes time to learn what the car can or in this case can't do. This car demands a little more respect than I have been used too and it bit me. Re-joining the circuit in P12, all that good work was thrown away and I had to knuckle down, finishing the race in P10.

Race 2 gave me another solid start, however Aron Smith shot across my bows in the first corner, contact was made and we both lost out. Into the next corner and Aron decided that the first corner contact was my fault and retaliated by running into the back of me sending me past the corner. I managed to make several places up until I was onto the back of Matt Neal's works Honda. Matt was using his substantial experience to keep me behind and I believe he deliberately backed me up towards his team-mate Gordon Shedden. I was in a Honda sandwich! With Matt's help, Gordon squeezed by me and with few laps remaining, I couldn't get him back and I crossed the line in a reasonable P8.

The final race was a real humdinger. Missing out of the reverse grid, we started P8. I lost a place at the start but soon made it back. There was a single nose to tail line of cars from first to 15th, all running the same pace, such is the closeness of the championship, its cars and drivers. With three laps to go I was still squabbling over P9 until I made a great pass on Adam Morgan, then Jason Plato, crossing the finish line on the back bumper of championship leader Andrew Jordon and getting 6th.

We have managed to elevate ourselves up the championship order by two places from 13th to 11th. Our aim with one round of the championship to go is to get inside the top ten. That would be a great come back from what has been a trying season however I really do believe Speedworks have come of age and I am eager to repay them with their first BTCC podium, something we should have done in race one!

Thank you as ever for your support everyone.

Regards,

Dave #17

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