Team Aon Ford Focus racers Tom Chilton and Andy Neate each collected a pair of points scoring finishes in the fourth meeting of the 2011 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship to give the new Global Ford Focus its best collective result so far this season. Both cars finished the final race of the weekend in the top seven, but both Team Aon drivers say there is more to come from their cars.
The duo lined up third and sixth for the damp opening race of the weekend at Oulton Park on Sunday but Chilton was ruled out with a brake problem as the cars set off from the grid. Neate opted for wet tyres and struggled in the treacherous conditions to bring his hatchback home in ninth place. In race two, Chilton powered up to tenth place but Neate was forced into the pits to swap to wet weather rubber and that blunted his charge. Neate headed Chilton home in race three in sixth place.
Chilton said that limited experience of the new Focus in the wet was one issue that caused him to struggle, but he says that there were other problems that slowed him in the third encounter. “It was frustrating to miss out in race one because that then meant I had to start from the back in race two but I was happy with my pace there,” said Chilton. “I climbed to tenth which was reasonable and it represented progress.“In race three, I had a couple of problems that meant I couldn’t get any higher than sixth. The car was still too soft because it was set-up for the wet and also I felt that my Focus wasn’t fast compared to Andy’s in a straight line. We have some investigations to do, but I suspect I had a small problem going up through the gears and that cost me outright pace. To come away with a seventh position was a blessing given those issues.”
Neate’s weekend was one of his most competitive in the series so far, and the Aylsebury racer thinks that developments away from the track have helped honed the machine to his liking. “After a disappointing first and second race, I am chuffed with the third race when I finished sixth,” said Neate. “We have made a few changes to the car and it was nice to go forward and overtake a few people. I was able to run at the front, my pace was good all weekend. My speed has always been there, but sometimes you need things to click and that is what has happened at Oulton Park.”
Team boss Mike Earle said that a lack of knowledge of how the car works in the wet was one of the major hurdles to overcome at Oulton Park and he says the set-up of the car on the difficult circuit was a journey into the unknown.
Earle commented: “This has been one of our most challenging weekends so far with a few small problems and the challenge of working on a surface that was slippery, which is something we have no experience of. I am sure there are things we have learned from this weekend and it is all about finding out what makes this new Ford Focus tick.”
The next round of the 2011 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship takes place at Croft in North Yorkshire on June 18/19. .
