Following a top-10 finish to cap off the opening round of the season with his new AmD Tuning squad, Dave Newsham hopes to continue that form this weekend as the British Touring Car Championship heads to Donington Park.
A steady weekend for the Inverness driver ended in promising fashion as Newsham broke into the top 10 for a ninth place finish in the third race of the day at Brands Hatch, securing early points as Shaun Hollamby‘s team adjust to their Ford Focus.
Newsham bemoaned understeer difficulties during the season opener, and says the team will return to a tried and tested set-up to offer greater balance in the Focus for Donington Park’s meeting this weekend.
“Brands Hatch was a bit of a trying weekend in a way because we struggled with understeer in the first two races and it was only in race three that we really got the balance sorted and could give an idea of what we can do,” said Newsham.
“We’re going back to a tried and tested set-up for this weekend at Donington which should give us better balance from the outset, and that will hopefully allow us to hit the ground running.”
The circuit is one at which Newsham finished a personal best of fourth at during the 2012 BTCC meeting, and one he hopes will be kinder to him than in previous seasons to fight for the top 10 once again this weekend.
“Donington is a circuit that has never been kind to me in the past, even in my Clio Cup winning season, but I hope that that can change this weekend. The main aim is to make sure we pick up three finishes and hopefully if we can start the weekend the way we ended things at Brands Hatch, we’ll be pushing into the top ten again.
“Although we tested at Donington Park on the Media Day, we had a brake issue that meant we didn’t get chance to chase a time before it started to rain. We didn’t show our hand in the dry as a result, but at least we know we’ll have a good car if it turns out to be wet this weekend!”
Team boss Hollamby reminisced about the AmD squad’s previous form when running the Volkswagen Golf, and outlined a trio of top 10 finishes as their predominant goal for the weekend in Leicester.
“As a team, we have some good memories of Donington Park from our time running the old VW Golf and the aim is to make sure that we come away from the weekend this time around having added to those memories”, said Hollamby. “The first thing is to try and bring home three points finishes, with the ultimate goal being to make sure they are all in the top ten.”
