The first weekend of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship turned out to be one of dismay for us at Adrian Flux Subaru Racing, having battled with issues from the outset followed by damage to three of the four Subaru Levorg’s.
Despite winter testing going well for us at Adrian Flux Subaru Racing, the balance of performance applied to us over the winter break has had a big effect and resulted in our lack of performance during Saturday’s practice sessions and left our engineers continuing to try and extract the performance from the car right up to the point of qualifying in the afternoon and through the races on Sunday.
When qualifying commenced we were unable to set a quick lap time in the dry before we then became victims of the weather after the heavens opened. This resulted in a disappointing session for all four cars and the best time was set by Jason giving him a position of 18th, followed by Ash in 22nd, James 27th, and Josh 31st for round one of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.
For his debut BTCC, Josh had an outstanding race and gained a finishing position of 24th, 8 positions up from where he started and James brought his car home safely in 27th leaving him frustrated but hungry for better things later on in the day. All in all, not a bad first race considering our starting positions.
All four Subaru Levorg’s chose the soft tyre option for race two and with the track temperature warming up in the spring sunshine.The hope for Josh and James was for them to make their way through to good positions to give them a comfortable starting place for the final race later in the afternoon.
The race saw Josh return to the pits once more with a repeat of his earlier gremlins, later finishing the race in 24th.
Race three - James would start the race in 21st with Josh in 24th and Ash 26th on the grid. All three drivers got good clean starts with survival mode ensuing once more at the back end of the grid and unfortunately this time it was James turn for the bad luck as he was off and into the tyre wall at Cooper Straight.
Josh brought his car home in 24th, his third finish of the day despite struggling with further gremlins.
Team owner Warren Scott summed up the weekend:
“The first three rounds were a disappointing start to the 2017 championship for us at Adrian Flux Subaru Racing but we are pleased to take away some positives with a few points from Jason’s 12th place finish. Our new drivers Ash and Josh showed great progression throughout the weekend and James had two good races which we are confident will transform into good results for the team as the season progresses.”
“It was a tough weekend for all in the team, for us we made a huge leap forward in the learning process of racing in the BTCC. I have no doubt in my mind the team will be working their socks off to get the car back up at the sharp end come Donington." said Price
Rookie Josh sits in 2nd place in the Jack Sears Trophy standings with 43 points from the weekend, behind Senna Proctor in the lead with 60 points. We now look forward to Donington in two weeks’ time on the weekend of the 15th and 16th April.