The British Touring Car Championship heads to Oulton Park this weekend for rounds 10-12 of the championship, bringing the six-week break to an end.
After an action packed opening three meetings, which have seen five different winners in the nine races, the drivers’ championship is led by Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Jason Plato. Plato has taken a staggering seven wins at Oulton Park, most recently in 2011 when he was unexpectedly promoted to the race lead after a last corner final lap coming together between Honda drivers Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden.
Triple Eight Race Engineering are one of the many BTCC teams that have been busy testing during the season break. Plato believes that their testing has led to progress: “We made some very good progress. Some things we needed some specific answers on from things we’ve discovered in free practice sessions at events – we were able to validate some of the previous things that we’ve run. From a development perspective we found some very interesting things. That will really help us with strategy as we now know which avenues are worth going down.”
Gordon Shedden, another 2011 winner at this at the 2.26 mile circuit, is only four points behind Plato in the drivers’ championship going into Oulton Park. Reigning champion Matt Neal is a further ten points behind his Honda Yuasa Racing team mate. Both Shedden and Neal will be chasing their fifth Oulton Park win on the weekend. Honda Yuasa Racing have also been testing during the break, with things not running as smoothly for Shedden as they did for Neal during last week’s testing. In spite of the issues Neal believes the team has improved their understanding of their NGTC cars as a result of the test: “We focused on optimising the NGTC ‘package’ which is something most teams are still figuring out, plus squeezing a bit more speed from the car. I’d say we’ve still taken a good step forward.”
Another 2011 Oulton Park race winner on the grid will be Mat Jackson. The Motorbase Performance driver currently leads the independent drivers’ championship and is looking forward to returning to Oulton Park: “I am looking forward to getting back behind the wheel of my Redstone Racing Focus ST at Oulton Park. It is a circuit that has been very good to me in the past and we are hoping that we can build on our recent success at Thruxton and close the gap to the leaders in the overall title hunt. Although we have had a long break the team has been working tirelessly on the cars to bring us closer to our NGTC-spec rivals.”
Andrew Jordan currently trails Jackson by only one point in the independent drivers’ championship standings. The Eurotech Racing driver will be one of the many drivers on the grid chasing their first Oulton Park win. While the previous round at Thruxton didn’t go as planned for the team, Jordan believes the lack of success ballast will prove valuable: “We’ll go there with no success ballast, which is really good because Oulton is probably the circuit where the extra weight hurts the most. I think we should be pretty strong. We need to go there and get back on track.”
West Surrey Racing’s Rob Collard is also looking to bounce back at Oulton Park after a difficult Thruxton weekend: “I am really looking forward to getting back behind the wheel of the eBay Motors BMW after a slightly frustrating weekend last time out. There has been some good testing over the past weeks and hopefully the car is in great shape to compete at the front of the grid. Oulton Park is a circuit that we have done well at previously and I hope that continues.”
The grid could be reduced to 22 cars at Oulton Park as Thorney Motorsport may skip the round due to ongoing issues with their Vauxhall Insignia
Oulton Park Timetable
Saturday 9th June
09:35 – 10:15 – Free Practice 1
12:30 – 13:10 – Free Practice 2
14:50 – 15:20 – Qualifying
Sunday 10th June
12:22 – Race One
14:22 – Race Two
17:16 – Race Three
