Martin Depper upbeat about his race pace

BTCC returnee Martin Depper says he’s confident he’s only going to get better with his new Honda Civic, after a tough weekend at Brands Hatch masked some good pace.

The former Mini racer has joined the champion Eurotech Racing team alongside Andrew Jordan, and showed flashes of speed during the Brands Hatch weekend.

He posted the 10th fastest time in second practice, lapped solidly in the first race, and actually set a better race lap than Jordan in the second race.

Ultimately the result card showed a disqualification for contact with James Cole in race one, before two DNFs in races two and three, both after contact with Triple Eight’s Marc Hynes.

But Depper was still upbeat about the season ahead, his first in the BTCC since a year with Forster Motorsport in 2010.

The start was mediocre, and my plan was to gently pick them all off, and it was working. We started to get a little bit held up by the cars in front,” Depper told TouringCarTimes after race two.

“Before that happened I was pretty confident I could move forward and pick off three or four in front of me. They were really starting to struggle going into Clearways, and we’ve got a great race setup. I’m just disappointed that at the moment I’m not able to demonstrate it.

“I had a couple of goes at Marc early on and managed to make one stick. Fair play to Marc, he was obviously trying to have a go back at me very quickly afterwards, and just made a little mistake and collected me.”

Looking back on race one, Depper added: “I fluffed the start, so I didn’t help myself at all. I had to come back through. Drivers have said if you have a bad race one, it follows you around for the rest of the weekend.

“If we could have got away I’m sure things would have been different. The Honda Civic is working really well and we just continue to get faster.”

Depper was lapped by team-mate Andrew Jordan and Triple Eight’s Jason Plato in the first race, and was happy with his pace in comparison to them after he let them through.

He said: “When they came past me I jumped onto the back of them, and it was very pleasing to know I was 0.2s slower than Andrew and Jason, and 0.2s faster than the cars in third, fourth, fifth and sixth.

“I was on the radio saying ‘where’s the rest of them’ and the team said ‘you’re quicker than them’. It demonstrates we do have the race pace. I’ve just now got to sort out my qualifying and those race starts.

“I’m a Mini racer from Birmingham, but there is just as much hard racing that goes on in those. It does give people some good skill sets.

“I’d like to think I’m only going to get better with how I learn the car. We are looking forward to an exciting year.”

On the incident with Cole, which stewards blamed him for, Depper said: “It was six of one and half a dozen of another. James was racing his race and defending his line. He’s probably looking in his mirrors thinking ‘who are you?’

“I’d given him a couple of little hurry-ups to show him I wasn’t going away. He had a bit of a moment going through Paddock, and as we were going up to Druids he left a bit of space.

“I tried to get the inside line and I was thinking he might have seen me, but unfortunately not. Obviously then, I put him out, which I apologised for.”

Round 1 of the 2014 British Touring Car Championship.