In a hard fought weekend of racing Chevrolet’s Alex MacDowall managed to secure points in two of the three races at Croft, despite not having the best of times at his home event.
Starting strong during free practice, MacDowall secured fourth place during qualifying with a lap of 1:25.157, just half a second off the pole position time of Tom Chilton.
The first race of the day would see the Carlisle youngster run initially in the top four before Tom Onslow-Cole squeezed past at Clervaux, two laps later MacDowall would take revenge and regain fourth place after the Ford driver slipped up at the complex.
“Race one put us on the back foot really”, said Alex, “We ran with a different set-up to Jason (Plato), I had a tighter differential on the car but that works the tyres a bit harder. After about five or six laps I kept running wide and missing apexes and then I received quite a bit of contact too. It was quite rough out there in all of the races really, at least we took a few points away.”
Lap 10 would mark the start of MacDowall’s downfall as his tyres started to lose adhesion thought Sunny In, the result left him off the racing line with Plato and Neal pushing past. Two laps later he would lose more places at the hairpin, pushing him down to thirteenth place for the finish.
Round 14 – the second race of the day, would provide a true test for the Chevrolet Cruze after MacDowall clipped a tyre star through the chicane, ripping the front wing from the car. Amazingly this didn’t seem to effect the pace of the youngster as he continued on his way to a ninth place finish, securing his first points of the day.
For the last race of the day MacDowall would record a tenth place finish with further points after an on track battle and contact with Matt Neal.
“It's not been the weekend I'd hoped for, especially after things started well with a top four in qualifying, so I'm aiming for much more at Snetterton after the summer break. We've had good straight-line speed this weekend so that bodes well for Snetterton and we have an official test day coming up so hopefully we can have a good run and prepare well.”