Daniel Welch: “It’s a funny thing to be happy with 15th”

Daniel Welch was pleased to make progress with his family-run team’s Proton Gen2 after “18 months of torture”.

Welch took his first Drivers Championship points of the 2015 season in the final race of the day with a fifteenth place finish. Although he wouldn’t call it a good result, Welch was pleased to leave Oulton Park with proof of improvement in the Proton across all six sessions.

“It’s a funny thing to be happy with finishing 15th,” Welch said, speaking to TouringCarTimes. “But for us its a good step forward, it’s good progress. We’ve had 18 months of torture, and we now seem to be on a bit of a level foot and we can work our way forwards.

“We spent the weekend tip toeing our way through, we are developing this engine on a race weekend. We started totally afresh from Donington, turning it up bit by bit as we went. We’ve still got a bit more to come, still got a bit more work but its great to come back from a weekend and have engines that are happy and healthy.”

The three races at Oulton Park saw the Proton battling for position, culminating in a points-scoring finish in race three, something that had not been seen up until this point as engine troubles plagued the first three meetings of the year.

“Our target is to get back to where we used to be a couple of years ago, racing in the top ten,” he continued. “We think we can do it, the car’s good enough, we’re just hampered on the engine side. Bit by bit we can work our way there. It was good to get in amongst people and race today, its been a while. I had to pick times where you go ‘no he’s a lot quicker, let him go’ but it’s been progress.”

The most satisfying thing for Welch, however, was knowing that there was no major rebuild projects in the engine department before Croft and hopefully boost team morale for the remainder of the year.

“Hopefully it’ll cheer all the boys up because morale’s been a bit low. It’ll be quite nice driving home tonight knowing we don’t have to rip the cars apart in the morning. The guys will be happy they’re not building an engine next week. Funny thing to finish 15th, can’t really say it’s a good result but for us, yeah, it’s good.”