AmDTuning brings in new race engineer

The AmDTuning.com team has announced the appointment of a new race engineer for the remainder of the 2016 BTCC season, with Keith Cheetham taking over the role from this weekend’s sixth round of the year at Snetterton.

Cheetham has spent this season overseeing the team’s British GT programme with a GT3-spec BMW Z4 and has previously worked with the likes of Trackspeed and Triple Eight during his sportscar career.

Having joined the touring car arm of the team during the two-day Dunlop tyre test last month, Cheetham will be on the pitwall this weekend as AmDTuning.com looks to build on an encouraging testing performance, where driver Ollie Jackson put his Audi S3 inside the top ten on the time sheets.

“The test at Snetterton went really well and we’re now looking to move forwards during the second half of the season,” team boss Shaun Hollamby said. “As a first real test of the year, we were able to have a proper look at a few things to see what worked and what didn’t, and we’re now looking forward to putting those changes into action.

“We’ve also spent recent weeks working on further improvements to the car, which include fitting a new Corbeau race seat that will save 9kg and, alongside Ollie’s ongoing fitness programme, takes us closer towards the weight limit.

“It’s also going to be good to start working with Keith on the BTCC programme after he agreed to engineer the Audi, as he brings a wealth of experience and expertise that will help us in our bid to regularly push for points finishes.

“He has done a great job this season with our GT3 BMW, and his work ethic and mindset fits in well with the pressures that come from running a touring car on a busy weekend. He fit in well with the touring car team during the test and it was good to get some input from a fresh set of eyes.”

With Jackson having picked up just two top 15 so far this season, Hollamby said he was hopeful that the improvements made during the test would be followed by more points during the second half of the season, starting with this weekend’s meeting in Norfolk.

“I think this could be a really interesting weekend after the summer break, and everything points towards us being at our most competitive so far this season,” he said. “From this point onwards, we want to be consistently challenging for points and I would be disappointed if we weren’t able to push towards the top ten before the end of the year.”

Russell Paddon, who previously engineered both Dave Newsham and Mike Bushell, is now working with Ford’s World Endurance Championship programme.