The AmDTuning.com team will live to fight another day after a tough return to action in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park. The West Thurrock-based team made the trip north to Cheshire seeking to bounce back from a disastrous weekend at Thruxton last month, where a heavy accident in qualifying caused substantial damage to the Ford Focus being raced this season by reigning Clio Cup champion Mike Bushell. Having worked hard to repair the damaged car in recent weeks, and with Mike passed fit after sustaining severe ligament damage in the incident, the team was optimistic about its chances – despite a penalty being carried into the weekend that meant the Tunbridge Wells-based racer was forced to start race one from the back of the grid. Despite that penalty, Mike had shown impressive speed in qualifying to set a best time little more than a second away from pole, with the team deciding to sacrifice track positions in the opening race to instead chase a quick lap time; revised rules this season meaning a driver’s quickest lap in race one would determine their starting position for race two. Sadly, a wrong call on set-up meant Mike was unable to extract the true potential from the car and left him 21st on the grid for race two, which started well as he made up a number of places in the opening laps. Contact from the Audi of Rob Austin would then affect the handling of the Focus and an off-track excursion at Druids left him 22nd and with further work to do in race three. Again starting strongly, Mike was quickly making up places and working his way towards the points scoring positions until a last lap incident that would force him into retirement.

 A concertina effect as a train of cars headed into Island Hairpin forced Mike to make contact with the rear of Austin's Audi which then ran wide; with Mike sensing the opportunity to make a move up the inside. However, when Austin then tried to cut back to keep the position, the resultant contact damaged the rear of the Ford and left Mike to drag the car back to the pits without being able to take the chequered flag.“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.“Things were going okay until contact with Rob damaged the handling and we had a bit of a spin, and then in race three, the car felt strong and we had the pace to move forwards. Unfortunately, going into the hairpin I got a hit from behind which forced me into Rob and he ran wide. I tried to go up the inside, he cut back across into me, and that was that.“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.”Team boss Shaun Hollamby admitted that, not for the first time this year, it had been a weekend of mixed emotions for the Ford squad - which will now hope for better fortune at Croft later this month when it expands to a two car team for the first time.“I’m really proud of the team for the way they worked to get us here this weekend and it’s a shame that they haven’t been rewarded with some points,” he said. “We were really pleased with the way Saturday went but then we went the wrong way on set-up in race one and it left us further back than we should have been in race two; where we then picked up damage from contact with someone else.“In race three, Mike was driving well and we were in the kind of position we should really have been in in the first race had it not been for the penalty. Sadly we got caught up in one of those incidents at the hairpin that happens in the BTCC, which put us out of the race. However, we’ll put it behind us and come back from it.“Mike has been able to learn a lot from this weekend and now we can turn our focus to Croft, where we’ll have our second car out for the first time. Hopefully things will go more our way.”