The Oulton Park weekend of the 2015 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship proved a difficult one for the AmDTuning.com team, with driver Mike Bushell unable to make a top-20 finish.
Last time out, at Thruxton, a heavy accident in qualifying stopped Bushell from being able to enter the following day’s races. With the car repaired, and Mike having been declared fit after sustaining severe ligament damage, the team was looking forward to their return to action in Cheshire.
In race one, Bushell decided to sacrifice track position in order to record a fast lap time, in an effort to get a strong start in race two. However, this didn’t quite go to plan and he was back in 21st to start the second race. Despite this, he made up a few places in the opening laps in his Ford Focus ST, but contact with Rob Austin affected his car’s handling, only allowing him to finish in 22nd.
In the day’s final race, Bushell once again made up some ground at the start, and was even working his way towards points-scoring positions, until a last lap accident which forced him to retire. With a long train of cars at Island hairpin, Mike made contact again with Rob Austin, which ran wide. Bushell then moved up the inside, but when Austin tried to cut back and defend his position, the two cars made contact.
“What I wouldn’t give for some luck!” he said. “Even though we had to start from the back of the grid because of my penalty, qualifying was great and the performance of the car was really good. We knew we needed to post a quick time in race one to try and get ourselves up the grid for race two so we took a bit of a gamble on set-up and it didn’t really work, which meant we had work to do in the second race.
“It’s not been the best weekend in terms of the end results, but after Thruxton, the positive is that we live to fight another day and we’ll come out fighting when we get to Croft.”
