Paul O'Neill is hoping to carry his pace from Oulton Park into this weekend's meeting at Croft in North Yorkshire, and leave the bad luck behind him.
The GoMobileUK.com with Tech–Speed Motorsport driver showed encouraging pace to take seventh in race two but couldn't convert his second row starting position into a good result in race three after spinning off in the damp conditions while trying to overtake Nick Foster.
The Widnes man expects the Chevrolet Cruze to perform well at Croft, and is relieved to see it back in peak condition after his heavy crash two weeks ago.
“We should be encouraged by the pace we showed in practice and qualifying at Oulton Park and on paper, we should be on for good weekend at Croft as the car is now working really well,” he said. “The guys at Tech-Speed worked really hard on making improvements to the car before Oulton Park and have worked really hard since then to repair the damage from the final race, but things are starting to fall into place.
O'Neill expects the turbo-powered Honda Racing Civics to be difficult to catch but is confident he can mix it with the other NGTC runners this weekend.
“There is one turbo team in particular that we know will be really quick, but at Oulton Park we were able to mix it with the others, and our aim for Croft has to be to do that again and come away from the weekend with a solid haul of points. I'd like to think that we can be amongst the top scoring teams.”
Teammate John George also expects the turbo cars to be strong, believing the North Yorkshire circuit will suit them, but is looking forward to returning to one of his favourite tracks.
“Croft is a circuit I love, but it's also a bit of power circuit so we need to see how we do against the turbo cars,” he said. “It's difficult to tell before we get on track on Saturday. However I'm going to Croft in confident mood given the way my own performances have gone.
“Even though I had a problem in qualifying at Oulton Park last time out, I managed to post a much quicker than I did last season. Hopefully I can do similar at Croft and continue to improve my times.”
Qualifying is scheduled for 15:05 on Saturday with all three races live on ITV4 & ITV4HD on Sunday, starting at 11:30am.
