The Team Aon squad amassed five top ten finishes in round five of the 2011 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship this weekend, as the championship visited the Croft circuit in North Yorkshire. Following a weekend full of potential and some frustration, Team Aon drivers Tom Chilton, Tom Onslow-Cole and Andy Neate all believe that the programme will step up a gear over the seven-week mid-season break.

The summer halt will give Team Aon a chance to work on further developments on its brand new global touring car, the two-litre turbocharged Ford Focus, which it uses in the UK’s premier tin-top series.

Tom Chilton came away from the rounds at Croft with three top ten finishes and he says that the rapid pace of development on the hatchback has given the team plenty of food for thought over the mid-year halt. Chilton scored a ninth, a seventh and a sixth place finish on Sunday.

“We had a lot of new parts on the car at Croft but we were scuppered by the good old British weather,” explained reigning Independents Trophy holder Chilton. “We have three drivers and with time on a dry track, we would have been able to work through a testing programme over the course of this weekend to find out what works and what doesn’t. Because it rained, we were on the back foot. By losing so much track time, we were feeling our way with the handling at Croft and we made a couple of radical choices in terms of set-up that didn’t go our way. We have more work planned on the car and we will come back stronger from this.”

Andy Neate had struggled in the treacherous conditions during qualifying and had reverted to a known set-up on the car for the races, but he was thwarted by a puncture in the opening race and a crash in race three. Despite that woe, he was ninth in race two and says that he is positive about the upgrades that have been made to the Ford.

“I was confident that the previous set-up would allow me to push, and I was right,” said Neate. “Race two was fantastic and I went from 20th to ninth at the finish so it shows that we can get pace from the Ford Focus. With the progress everyone is pushing to make with the car, I am confident ahead of the second half of the year.”

New recruit Tom Onslow-Cole was saddled with 45 kilograms of ballast because he was a new entry into the championship and that meant he was struggling to keep pace with the other two machines. Like Chilton, he worked through a range of experimental upgrades and managed to climb into the top ten in the second race of the weekend to open his points account with Team Aon.

Onslow-Cole explained: “It has been a real baptism of fire. I was getting familiar with the car in difficult conditions and we were trying some new things in terms of the set-up too. I think we probably went the wrong way with my car in terms of generating grip from the set-up, but we can even take a positive from that because now we know what doesn’t work. There is definitely more time to come from me too when I get used to the new Focus.”

The team has seven weeks to prepare for the sixth meeting of the calendar, when the championship will reconvene for three rounds on the Snetterton 300 circuit in Norfolk. Team Aon Principal Mike Earle says the break will be crucial to unlocking some of the handling secrets from the new Ford Focus racer.

“This weekend hasn’t been one of our most successful,” admitted Earle afterwards. “That is what happens when you try to push the boundaries in terms of developing a car quickly, without much track time. We came with a lot of new things to try and we didn’t get the right track conditions that we needed to fully refine them which meant all of our drivers were experimenting all the way through the weekend.

“Now Croft is behind us, we have plenty of time to look through the data and refine the car even further. I believe that a number of steps we have taken are in the right direction and we will work hard over the break to translate that into some top results at Snetterton.”