Ebullient start for Arena in Italy

British squad Arena Motorsport had a strong start in the World Touring Car Championship at Monza, with both cars finishing both races on their debut, with expectations within the team that improvements will be soon to follow.

James Nash and Tom Chilton qualified 14th and 15th for the first meeting, with the two Fords opting not to slipstream as their rivals had at the high speed Lombard circuit. Nash was caught up in an incident with Stefano D’Aste’s Wiechers-Sport BMW and Tiago Monteiro’s SUNRED SEAT at Turn 1 of the first lap, but was able to carry on with front end damage to finish 16th, with Chilton finishing up in 13th.

In race two, the positions were reversed with Nash 13th in his partially repaired Focus S2000 TC and Chilton in 16th.

“I said – if we can get into the top ten sometime during the year we’ll be happy,” said Team Principal Mike Earle to TouringCarTimes.

“We haven’t come into this thinking ‘oh this is easy’. We’ve got to improve our qualifying, I think we can qualify in the top ten. We’ve got straightline speed to find, we’re bottom of the speed traps which doesn’t help at a place like this, but both drivers said that through the very few twisty bits that there are here, the car was as quick as anything. So yes, some positives but unfortunately more negatives at the moment, but we’ll get there.”

The team were running with an additional 30kg of ballast this weekend which made the two Ford Focuses the second heaviest cars on the grid after last year’s Championship winning Chevrolets, after the FIA requested some changes to the front suspension of the cars which couldn’t be done in time for Monza.

On his impressions of the WTCC on the team’s first appearance, in the Championship, Earle added:
“It’s very well run, it’s very well put together, with strict regulations which is great, I’ve got no problem with that.”

“I know everyone up and down this pit lane who’s built cars, when they first started they had to keep combing away until the FIA were happy with it. And to be fair, although they’ve given us quite a hard time they’ve been very fair, they’ve told us what they don’t want us to and they’ve told us what they do want us to do and they’ve helped us in any way they can contrary to what people may believe.”

Tom Chilton enjoyed his first weekend in the WTCC, though had to recover spots after being knocked into a spin in race two. The 2010 BTCC independents’ champion’s best finish was 13th in the first race.

“It was great to see that the car has potential in qualifying and race set-up,” said Chilton. “We didn’t have the greatest of luck during the races but I think we can be proud of what we’ve achieved in our first race weekend.”

James Nash, who was a notable ninth fastest in the Sunday morning warm up, also had an impressive first outing with the new Ford, also finishing 13th in the second race despite carrying left over damage from race one.

“I’m pleased to have finished both races on my debut, though obviously would like to have made the top 10 which was the aim ahead of the weekend,” said Nash. “We’ve already got mechanical reliability and I’d like to also say a special thank you to the team for enabling me to keep racing after the race one incident.”

“There wasn’t much I could have done to avoid becoming involved in the race one first corner crash which was unfortunate. Despite the fantastic work of the team to get as much of the damage repaired as possible within the 15 minutes allowed, we had other damage we couldn’t repair in time. Consequently, the handling thereafter wasn’t quite right and the result was that I wasn’t able to offer a real challenge in race two.”