Matt Neal and Honda downbeat after tough races at Croft

Honda took their worst points haul of the season at Croft, with Matt Neal scoring the team’s best result of tenth in Race 2, with the team resorting to what looked like sheer desperation in Race 3, putting slicks on Gordon Shedden’s car on a wet track, which didn’t pay off for the reigning champion.

“The positives of this weekend are at least they’re putting a straight car back in the truck,” said Neal to TouringCarTimes.

“(In Race 3) we were just trying to split our strategies, and (Shedden) went brave on slicks, fair play to him, but it just wasn’t happening either way we tried it this weekend.”

The rear-wheel drive cars have always been strong at Croft, though rain in Race 3 helped to be an equalising factor, allowing Triple Eight Racing’s Ashley Sutton to snatch the win from BMW’s Sam Tordoff in the MG 6, but Neal explains the revised boost calculation, which applies from the last round at Oulton Park and through the next round at Snetterton are currently hampering the Team Dynamics-run Civics, which are the only ones to run the Type R engine instead of the “TOCA engine”.

“(Croft’s) not a front-wheel drive circuit anyway, but when you’re last and second-to-last over the finish line in almost every session, you can’t make that up,” explained Neal. “The championship is too competitive. You at least need to be in the hunt, even when we get the (success ballast) weight taken out.”

After a damage limitation weekend, Neal picked up 15 points across the course of the weekend and is still third in the drivers’ standings, 15 points behind Sam Tordoff, while Gordon Shedden tumbled from fourth to ninth, scoring just four points.