Phil Glew expects “tough weekend” on BTCC return
Phil Glew is looking forward to returning to the BTCC at next weekend’s round at Silverstone, but admits it’ll be a struggle with the new León NGTC to TouringCarTimes.
Phil Glew, who took a double points finish in his debut at Thruxton with Triple Eight Race Engineering has sat out the season as sponsorship troubles hit the veteran BTCC squad, and has been looking for his chance to get back into the championship since.
Switching from Triple Eight to a new to the BTCC team in YourRacingCar.com, even with the technical expertise of Special Tuning UK behind them is certainly different to the original plan according to Glew, and he’s approaching his second race weekend accordingly.
“It is very much a development weekend, developing a relationship with the sponsor YRC, and all the fans,” said Glew to TouringCarTimes.
“And it’s all new to the fans as they’ve not been involved in the touring cars yet…we’re also developing a new engine and a new car. We’re the next people to put in the new generation engine into a different type of car, it’s only been used in a Vauxhall so far – so it’s going to be difficult.”
The NGTC engine has only been run by Andrew Jordan and Dave Pinkney so far this season, but with six race weekends experience with the engine behind them, the YourRacingCar.com team will face a challenging first weekend in the BTCC.
“I’m going to have to dig deep and stay mentally strong, because I think it’s going to be a tough weekend,” explained Glew.
“At the moment, they’ve asked me if I can just do this round. From then on we’ll see what happens.”
“I’m just going to take Silverstone as it comes, turn up on the test, do the best we can and give us much feedback as I can, which is the most important thing, to my engineer who’s from SEAT…and develop the car. If we can have two good races and don’t have any problems, then we might get lucky in the third race.”
The NGTC engine has already won a race this season, and now put in the capable SEAT León chassis, the key week point of which is it’s lack of top end speed with it’s older engine, could be the catalyst which propels the Special Tuning UK car to the front from their current position as a regularly top ten capable team.
“It’s a complete gamble,” said Glew
“We don’t know what to expect, nobody does. It could go horribly wrong, but we could have a very lucky weekend. Anything’s a bonus…as long as can have a good weekend commercially with all the guests and sponsors, anything else is a bonus.”
