BMR hopes to fight back from Brands “disaster”

Team BMR boss Warren Scott says he is confident that Subaru will be able to bounce back from a tough start to the new BTCC season at Brands Hatch.

The team went into the new season in optimistic mood, but struggled for pace throughout practice as it worked to dial out a series of handling issues with the Levorg GT.

A difficult qualifying session would see only Jason Plato break into the top 20, with the former champion then scoring the only points on race day with twelfth in race one.

A start-line accident in race two would end Plato’s weekend early whilst there were also multiple incidents that befell Ash Sutton and prevented him from scoring point on his debut.

In fact, with James Cole crashing out of race three, only rookie Josh Price would manage to finish all three races, despite being forced to battle against a selection of mechanical problems himself.

It meant a weekend that looked to be nothing short of a disaster in terms of results, although team boss Warren Scott – in his first weekend in a watching brief from the sidelines – insisted things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

“We had a tough weekend after a good winter,” he admitted to TouringCarTimes. “There were some issues that came up that altered how the car handled and although we worked hard to fix them and to get the car sorted for race day, where we were in qualifying left us on the back foot.

“In truth, we’d sorted the car for qualifying, as FP1 and FP2 were pretty much a write off and we were nowhere. However, the lack of track time with the car as it needed to be, alongside the rain, meant we couldn’t really benefit from the changes we had made.

“Even then on race day, Jason could well have got into the top ten in race two without the incident at the start and then we might have got the reverse grid and be ending the weekend in a totally different position. Ash was also quick but was unlucky with incidents on track that weren’t his fault.”

Admitting that the results on paper were far from what was expected, Scott said he was confident that the team would be able to return to form when the series heads for Donington Park for round two.

“On paper, this weekend looks like a disaster but there are positives to take from it,” he said. “There is no doubt that we aren’t where we need to be, but we are definitely in a better position than we were in practice.

“I certainly hope things will be improved when we get to Donington Park. We had a good test there before the season and believe that the changes we made over the weekend at Brands Hatch will work and we’ll be strong.”