Neate: My MG will be ready for Brands

With the Triple Eight Race Engineering build still ongoing, Andy Neate’s new NGTC MG was noticeably absent from the British Touring Car Championship media day at Silverstone on Monday. TcT spoke to Neate about his new team mate, new race car and expectations for the 2012 season.

TcT: Are you looking forward to having Jason Plato as a team mate this year?
“Oh yeah. I think he is the most successful BTCC driver in pitlane so I’ve got one hell of a benchmark. I’m really looking forward to it.”

TcT: Do you think there’s a lot you can learn from him?
“Without a doubt. You look at JP when he started in touring cars, I think his teammate was Alain Menu when he drove for Williams in the Renault and that obviously brought him on. Obviously he was a great driver beforehand but even still. You look at drivers like [Fabrizio] Giovanardi and Matt Neal and at some point in their career they’ve had that level of team mate to move them on to the next level. That was important for me when I signed for Triple Eight and MG that I had a team mate of that sort of level. That’s no disrespect to the team mates I’ve had in the past. I’ve had some good team mates, [Rob] Collard, Tom Onslow-Cole and Tom Chilton. At the end of last year I think I was every bit a match for TOC and TC and to move on to that next bit I just need that bit extra. ”

Tct: Tell us about the car?
“The MG6 is obviously a new car to the UK but as far as the race car is concerned it’s the NGTC regulations. So they chop literally most of it off, stitch these new fabricated standard parts on the front and rear and away you go. It’s been a massive learning curve for the team just building it and frankly they’ve built it in three months. So it’s been a bit of a rush to get a programme, but even still when you look at the car today they’ve just done an awesome job. It’s amazing to see the car out on track. I’m not quite sure what’s going on underneath because I don’t think it’s the finished article, but it still went out on the circuit”

TcT: When will you be driving the car?
“I think I’m driving it next week, just straight line stuff. I’ll be doing more installation laps and going through systems checks and so on but I won’t actually drive my race car until Brands [Hatch]. They’re back at the factory now working 24/7 building it.”

TcT: Will your race car be ready for Brands Hatch?
“It will be there 100%, without a doubt. All the stuff we learn on Jason’s car will be transferred straight onto mine. So it’s all valuable mileage.”

TcT: Do you think you’ll be in a position to challenge straight away?
“We’ve got to be realistic. If you roll a race car out for its time in anger on the track at a race weekend you can’t expect to go out and win, but anything can happen in the BTCC. We’ve got three races on the Sunday plus we’ve got free practice on the Saturday and qualifying. So by that time we should have collected quite a bit of data. So by race three on the Sunday who knows, I’m not going to make any bold predictions. We’ve got all the ingredients there it’s just about putting it all together for the race. Predictions for Brands I’d be very cautious about what I said. I think towards race weekend three we’ve got to be challenging for podiums week in and week out. That’s got to be the plan.”

TcT: So you expect to be in the Championship mix at the end of the season?
“Definitely. This year has got to be about consistency for me particularly. Last year I was either really fast or I binned it, there was no in between. This year it’s got to be a more measured approach, I’ve still got to be fast of course because that’s important, but I also need to understand when I can be fast and when I need to use discretion.”