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A View From The Driver's Seat: Brands Hatch and the end of the 2013 BTCC season

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 17 October 2013

Dave Newsham looks back at the last meeting of the 2013 BTCC season and his year with Speedworks Motorsport and the Toyota Avensis.

I can't believe how this year has flown by - the end of the season has arrived all too soon! Round 10 of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship was held at Brands Hatch, Kent. It is such a long way from Inverness that easyJet was the mode of transport for this weekend. Having left a glorious and sunny Inverness airport, I arrived at a cold and very wet Brands Hatch on Friday to catch up with my Speedworks team. It was brief and I headed to my hotel to dry out and warm up.

With improvements to the car last time out at Silverstone, we decided to go even further in the same direction with the car set-up and I was eager to get behind the wheel of my Toyota for further tests. Saturday morning and thankfully the rain had stopped but the track was still damp for FP1. With a part dry and part wet circuit it was impossible to gauge the cars handling. With six minutes to go we decided to bolt slick tyres on. Getting faster with each lap, I took the chequered flag setting the fastest time of all on the final lap. Someone reminded me that I had taken P1 in practice at each of the last three events. It's a pity there are no points for that! FP2 was dry so we could get some valuable testing in, yes? No! I was just about to start my first flying lap when something broke at the front of my car. I managed to limp back to the pits where my boys got to work. There was a broken hub. With 15 minutes remaining my car was repaired and good to go. I found the car a little on edge, then turning into Paddock Hill Bend the rear stepped away and I was into the gravel trap. Session over!

In qualifying we simply hadn't had enough running to dial the new set-up in to the track and myself into the car. We could have gone back to our Silverstone set-up, however there was no title on the line so we decided to stick with the set-up and hope with new tyres it worked better. Well, with a further two spins, getting blocked on quick laps and generally having to fight the car through every turn, it's clear the set-up didn't suit my style of driving. I was lucky to bring the car home in one piece! P11 was not what we were looking for but not a disaster either.

Race one: It had been raining heavily all morning and the track was saturated. We had decided to move the car set-up back towards what we had a Silverstone but we were guessing at a wet set-up. Making a great start, I completed the first lap in P8 but was still struggling a little with the car. Lap 8 and I would find my way into the Paddock Hill Bend gravel trap again, losing three places in the process. I was a little lonely after that as I was circulating on my own for much of the race, ending it where I started in P11.

Race two: Several changes were made to the car based on my feedback. Again making a solid start and I was soon making places up and the car felt really quick. By lap 8 I was up to P4 and the fastest car on track but 10.5 seconds behind leader Jason Plato. A deluge came down and the car was literally aquaplaning everywhere. I backed off as it was getting dangerous. The track started to improve towards the end and I found myself closing in on Mat Jackson's P3 by a second per lap. Running out of laps, I finished P4 - my highest placing of the season and equalling Speedworks best ever.

Race three: Off the start I maintained my P4 and was literally all over the back of Aron Smith. I was about to start lap two heading down the start finish straight when I got hit in the side by Mat Jackson, sending me completely sideways at 120mph. People were jumping back from the pit wall as they waited for my car to make impact with it. I kept my foot on the throttle to try and bring the front of the car round. It worked and I found myself pointing forwards again! That was the biggest save of my career - God only knows how I managed it. After this I was struggling to hold on to Jackson and Smith as my car felt different. Had I sustained damage in that hit? I soldiered on, now in P5. Colin Turkington's BMW was approaching at pace. Impossible to defend, he passed me, finishing off my final race of the season in P6. Not too shabby!

To sum up the season it has been frustrating but also enjoyable. Speedworks are a cracking team - a great bunch of people and I have no doubt they are going to be one of the teams to beat in the future. It has been a year of a lot of development to the car to make it reliable and, with a change to the engineering team recently, to make the Toyota Avensis quick too. The next part of my BTCC journey is to negotiate my drive for the 2014 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship. I will of course be keeping you posted every step of the way.

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Thank you too, all my followers and fans. Bye for now.

Dave #17

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