VW Thruxton form not guaranteed, says Alain Menu

Team BMR’s Alain Menu says the form his Volkswagen CC showed at Thruxton last season is no guarantee of success this time around, but he is still confident of a good display.

One of the stories of the weekend in Hampshire in 2013 was Tom Onslow-Cole’s brace of podiums in the new CC, then under the umbrella of Tony Gilham Racing.

The returning Swiss says the car has improved since then, but he believes its results last year were masking its overall lack of pace.

“Everybody talks about it, but when you look at the lap times from that race last year, Onslow-Cole was miles off. OK, he got podiums, but from the leading cars, the lap times were not good,” said Menu to TouringCarTimes.

“The car is better this year, and everyone talks about Thruxton, but we should have been good here [Donington Park].

“But the car is there or thereabouts. On paper we have a quick car, so Thruxton should be good.”

Menu was speaking after another testing weekend at Donington Park, with some flashes of blistering pace countered with bad luck, and bad starts.

He qualified sixth, just behind team-mate Aron Smith, but lost 0.2s in traffic on his best lap, which cost him third on the grid. 

Menu finished 13th after a slow start in race one, then had a huge moment after being hit at the Old Hairpin on lap one of the second race. As with Brands Hatch, the 1997 and 2000 champion carved through the field from the back of the grid in race three, to finish ninth.

Menu said: “The first race, as a team we did not have a wet set-up so we struggled. Both of my starts in the wet were not good, and I got too much wheel-spin.

“But it was the first time ever I had driven an NGTC car in the wet, so it was going to be tough for me.

“The second race I was unlucky with the incident with Marc Hynes at the Old Hairpin, on the first lap. I lifted off to see if he would go right or left, and when I went back on the throttle I got hit from behind, and that put me on the grass.

“First my thought was to avoid hitting the wall, but then I crossed the track, so I was lucky that nobody hit me. I ended up in the gravel on the other side, so that was that.

“The last race just shows what could have been, and what should have been.”