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A View From The Driver's Seat: It's Brands Hatch and the start of a new era for me!

By Aiden Moffat / MJP Media | 27 March 2014

This weekend marks a whole new era for me as I start the 2014 season as a fully-fledged and full time Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship driver for the very first time!

It seems quite surreal for me to be saying that. After all, until now it has been part dream, part hard work and part planning and moving forward. Since the end of last season I have had the easiest job of anyone in the team, simply being available when required for media and PR work, input into a few bits of the team's ideas and several days testing. Everyone else in the team, from top down, has been working their socks off to get us where we are today, a full BTCC team.

So how do I approach a weekend like this? Well, that is simple really. I have a reasonable approach to the weekend and whilst expectations are high, I have to temper those by remembering not only how far the team have come, but how far I as a driver still have to go. This is a new car to me still and I have never raced it. There will be 30 cars in the two Free Practice sessions on Saturday and I need to find time to work with the team and RML to get the best set up for the car ready for qualifying. I need to listen to them and they need to work with my input so that we can get the car as close as possible to how I want it before qualifying.

Then we have Saturday afternoon's qualifying session. Again, with more cars than ever before on the grid, more former champions than ever and crucially every car built to the same specification, it will be as much about finding clear space to put in a blinding lap as anything else. Many a time in qualifying a blistering lap can be ruined by just meeting traffic at the wrong point.

Then of course there will be Sunday. I have no doubt that I will find myself right in the middle of the track at the start of race 1 with the adrenalin coursing through me. With 30 cars all blasting the first 200 metres and then trying to shoehorn themselves into Paddock Hill bend, there are bound to be some incidents. My job will be to keep away from them. You can't win a race at the first corner, but you can certainly end it. I don't want that for the team, my fans and my sponsors, so I will do my best to stay out of trouble.

After those first few corners I will be doing my best to stick to the team strategy and see if we can get a result with 2 goals in mind. The first is obviously to score championship points, whilst the second is to make up places to score points for the Jack Sears Trophy. This will also be my aim in races 2 and 3 and bringing the car home in good order will be a great effort.

So what are my goals for the weekend? Well I would be very happy if we could qualify somewhere in the middle of the field. I would also be happy if we can earn some points in both categories and to bring the car home safe and sound. Sometimes the safe and sound part isn't down to the driver as much as everyone around him but I will do my best. Autograph signing is first thing Sunday morning and I would love to see you then!

Aiden #16

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