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A View From The Driver's Seat: We came, we saw, we Rocked!

By Dave Newsham / MJP Media | 17 September 2013

Dave Newsham looks back at Rockingham and recalls the fun and drama of the weekend as the leading Toyota driver who topped the time sheet in the free practice sessions.

If proof were needed - top of the time sheet!

Having spent many hours at a snail's pace on the M6 and M1 in Friday rush hour traffic that seemed to last the whole day travelling to Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship events, I decided to drive through the night on Thursday, arriving at Rockingham in the early hours of Friday. This gave me plenty of chill time prior to the event. After the disappointment of Knockhill, there were many modifications made to my Speedworks Toyota Avensis: beefed up chassis and suspension parts, additional cooling for brakes and engine. I would imagine there is never a dull moment at Speedworks HQ.

Saturday morning and as usual it was an early start for the drivers sign-on and briefings, then I was strapped into my car where a damp track awaited us for Free Practice One. The car was feeling good, but not perfect, however I was happy to end the session in P4 with only the dominant Hondas ahead of us.

FP2 was an even bigger surprise. Having worked on race set-up, we threw a set of new tyres on the car in the dying minutes. I took the chequered flag and on the slow-down lap I was talking away to my engineer giving him a long list of areas to improve the car. Once I had stopped blithering, my engineer said "Got that Dave, but we are P1 by quarter of a second!"

Qualifying at Rockingham

Dilemma... do we change the car set-up or leave it alone. When things are going well, it is best to leave things alone we thought. So to qualifying and despite mirroring my FP2 times, it was only good enough for P8. It was however best of the rest behind the works Hondas and MGs with the Audi of Rob Austin in there too. The next best Toyota was P16.

Sunday morning and for race 1 another damp track greeted us. Horrible conditions as it was not dry enough for slick tyres, but the wets where going to get a pounding! I got a great start and was up to P5 by lap eight. Things were looking good, however as the race went on the conditions played in to the hands of the rear wheel drive cars and the BMWs and Audi found their way past me. My front tyres were gone and I hung on to take P8.

Race two was dry, so slick tyres were fitted to the car. Making a great start, I soon found my way up to P4 and we were all over the back of Mat Jackson. We were very quick at the start whilst the tyres were new, but I knew very early on that my pace would start to slow as I was experiencing under-steer and that was only going to get worse as the race went on. Both works MGs passed me and then Colin Turkington. I spent the rest of the race in a lonely P7 hanging on to Jason Plato.

Dave meeting some of his fans

Race three was our race to run the soft compound tyres and as we suffered tyre degradation with the hard tyres we were going to be in serious trouble with the softs, unless we went to a radical set-up, so that's what we did! The reverse grid was drawn and we would be placed P2 on the grid. Making a great start I was running side by side with pole man Andrew Jordan. He had the line for the first hairpin, so I slotted in behind him when 'wallop', the BMW of Colin hit me sending me wide. I was cursing Colin at the time, however seeing the replay on TV he was pushed from behind and into me. This however pushed me down to P5 which became P7 a couple of laps later when Mat Jackson and Gordon Shedden passed me. I was hanging on to the back of them when the flying Rob Austin squeezed his way past. Rob had been the easy winner of the previous race, so I opted to sit behind him thinking he could take me forward with him but he was struggling to hold on to the leaders. I needed to make a move! The next couple of laps were probably the most fun I have had since joining BTCC as we passed each other, we went side by side for almost half a lap. Great fun, but it wrecked any chance of either of us bettering P7 as the leaders were gone!

I eventually made a pass stick on Rob and buckled down. The data shows we actually started to gain on Gordon Shedden and Sam Tordoff, but the gap was too big. Confident I could hold on to the P7 and just about to start the final lap, Rob got it wrong and fired into the side of my car sending me completely sideways. This allowed Matt Neal and Rob to get by me. Fortunately there was little damage to my car, unlike Rob's, who sustained steering damage and was hobbled. I passed Rob, but could not do anything about Matt and I crossed the line in P8. I was however very encouraged by the pace of my car. It's looking promising for the final two rounds of the season and we whooped the other Toyotas!

We are right back in the mix again, this time with perfect reliability! I must therefore say thanks again to my sponsors, team and all you lovely followers!

Dave #17

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