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Brands Hatch - April 15/16

Team:-

Andy Scott	Tim Sopp
Rob Coombs	Gary Scott
Andy Lofthouse	Will Scott
Transporter Driver:	Jack Hobbs

Sunday April 15
The famous circuit of Brands Hatch in Kent was host to the first two rounds of the redesigned British Touring Car Championships. Last year's Super Tourers are gone and have been replaced by a new Touring Class with reduced specifications in an attempt to lower the hitherto massive costs incurred in previous years. Like last year's series, the Super Production Class B has been retained but enhanced to form the BTC-Production series. Many of last year's National Saloon entrants had made the switch, despite the increased costs. Any team serious about saloon racing really had no choice but to switch as the National Saloon Championships had been moved over to the British Touring series in an attempt to give a much larger presence on the grid until the Touring class entices back more cars.

Synchro Motorsport had made that switch and had spent the first part of the year developing a brand new Honda Accord, which would be driven by Dave Allan. This car is a step on from last year's Civic and should enable the team to be even more competitive. Kevin Hicks, the other Synchro driver from last year, would not be racing this season as he is due to get married later this year.

A lot of hard work had spent preparing the car, which was only completed just a few hours before the car was loaded onto the transporter for its trip down to Brands. Dave Allan's first drive in the car was in the free practice that started at 11.00 on the Sunday morning. He felt his way sensibly through the 45-minute session and was very pleased with the way the car performed. Academic though it is, Dave finished in sixteenth position of the twenty-one drivers that competed.

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The weather remained cold and cloudy but dry for the thirty minute qualifying session due to start at 2.30. Dave was again pleased with how the session went although his final position of seventeenth belied the potential of the car. Starting slowly he dropped his time below 54 seconds when he had to pit as the exhaust had come loose. After returning to the track he reduced his best lap time by a further tenth to 53.816. He pitted for a front wheel tyre change before completing his final three laps and another 53.9.

Dave's main problem was the understeer on fast corners under power. If the team can improve that before tomorrow's race then anything is possible.

Monday, April 16
The weather was similar to yesterday, dry, cloudy and cold. The BTC-Production Sprint race was the first race of the day, scheduled to start at 10.35. The Synchro team had made a number of changes to the Accord in an attempt to iron out some of the handling problems.

The race was away at 10.40 and immediately had an incident as Paul O'Neill ran wide at Paddock Bend into the gravel, causing the car to barrel roll onto its roof. The safety car came out to give the marshals time to clear the car, which bunched up the field again. Dave had made a good start and had moved to fourteenth by the end of the second lap. He came under intense pressure from Rick Kraemer until Rick made an error at Graham Hill bend and was lucky to escape with no damage as he did a 360-degree spin on the Cooper Straight with cars squeezing by on either side of his Focus. This gave Dave a bit of a gap from the pursuing bunch.

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