Ford fighting for top tens at Valencia

The two Ford Focuses of Arena Motorsport were one step closer to scoring their first points at Valencia, with the team fighting just outside the top ten in both races.

James Nash finished 12th in race one, running as high as 11th before being passed by the Wiechers-Sport BMW of Stefano D’Aste in the closing stages, with team-mate Tom Chilton 19th in the first race running with a new engine which was installed after qualifying.

In race two, Chilton finished 15th after fighting with Bamboo Engineering driver Pasquale Di Sabatino in the race, whilst Nash was again up to 11th before a suspension issue saw him retire with five laps to go.

“We know where our issues are, it’s chassis development we need to do,” said Nash to TouringCarTimes.

“Unfortunately that’s not the easiest bit to sort out, but we’ve proved a few things throughout the weekend and we know which bit to attack so that’s a positive. We were fighting near the top ten this time, made two good starts and pushing our way forward which is what we want to do.”

In race one, Nash had to keep the two BMWs behind of Alberto Cerqui and Stefano D’Aste, allowing the two Leóns of Monteiro and O’Young to escape up ahead. D’Aste was soon able to pass Nash after he was able to pass Cerqui’s ROAL Motorsport BMW, leaving the Ford driver in 12th and picking up the team’s best result after both Chilton and Nash finished 13th in the respective races at Monza three weeks ago.

“Race one we wouldn’t have been able to have raced up to that position but one thing we can do is hold people up, so that’s exactly what we did,” said Nash. “We didn’t do anything dangerous…just made the car wide. It was hard work and I was expecting more of a tap from behind. D’Aste made it quite clear he was coming through and did a good overtake, the others weren’t as forceful or wanting it so much.”

In race two, a good start and a few issues ahead, mainly a bad start for Aleksei Dudukalo and retirement from Darryl O’Young which saw Nash again up into 11th spot, before he was forced to retire with an unidentified issue on Lap 8.

“(It was) something around (the suspension) area, so it could be a rose joint, a bracket on the subframe or something to do with the subframe. Until we inspect it closely we don’t know. We think it’s caused from race one, we had a bit of a knock with D’Aste on the first lap out the back and it could have just put a fracture in the components.”