Alex MacDowall impresses early as fastest indie in testing

British Touring Car graduate Alex MacDowall was the fastest independent driver on the Thursday test day at the Monza circuit in the Bamboo Engineering Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T, a track where he has never raced before.

MacDowall moves to the WTCC along with former BTCC rivals James Nash, Tom Chilton and Tom Boardman this season, and the 21-year-old from Carlisle was quick to make his mark, setting the overall fifth fastest time behind the three works Chevrolets and Gabriele Tarquini’s SEAT, and was almost two tenths faster than 2011 STCC champion Rickard Rydell in the same car.

“I settled in to the team quickly, I’m familiar with the car as well so it was really just getting used to the track, which didn’t take too long when there’s just three main straights and a couple of chicanes,” said MacDowall to TouringCarTimes.

“We’re just behind the works cars but we’re not really battling them, the main objective is to be top independent which is what we achieved in all the tests yesterday. If we can carry that through to tomorrow then hopefully we’re in a strong position to almost dominate.”

MacDowall raced a normally aspirated Chevrolet Cruze in the BTCC in 2010 and 2011, with this weekend marking the first time he’s driven the turbocharged WTCC-spec Cruze at a race meeting, and remarked:

“It’s just nice to be in a turbo. Now I can see why we were moaning all last year in the British touring cars; it didn’t take much time to get used to it, it just delivers the power a bit differently, but in terms of the handling, it just feels the same.”