Mixed weekend for Dave Newsham at Donington Park

After taking his first BTCC pole position and podium at the season opener at Brands Hatch, Team ES Racing’s Dave Newsham had a mixed weekend at Donington Park.

After topping free practice two, Newsham was disappointed to qualify seventh after being caught out by the rain that interrupted Saturday’s thirty minute qualifying session. The Scottish driver finished race one in the same position: “In the first race I made a lousy start. I managed to get some places back, but our pace wasn’t very good.”

Team ES Racing made changes to the car before the second race, with Newsham crossing the line in fourth: “We made some changes to the car for the second race and it was a bit more consistent throughout the race. We had good pace at the end of the first race and we were catching the people up again but we seemed to have found something that worked all the way through [the race] and we had the pace at the end. I came up behind Mat Jackson [in third] but he’s got more horsepower than we’ve got unfortunately so when we got to a straight he just pulled out that car length, maybe a car and a half. It just would have been a lunge if I was going to get past him and I didn’t want to end up taking us both out.”

On his way through to fourth Newsham was involved in an incident with Andrew Jordan, making contact with the Eurotech Racing driver’s Honda Civic at Macleans: “[Tom] Onslow-Cole was trying to squeeze me and stop me from getting by. I think Onslow-Cole and I made a little bit of contact which made me lock my wheels. I just tapped the back of Andy [Jordan] and he went sideways unfortunately. I went to try and apologise to him [after the race] but he wasn’t having any of it”. Jordan had the following to say to TouringCarTimes on the incident: “Newsham did come and say sorry, but that doesn’t improve our race or anything like that. It’s frustrating but I’m not worrying about it too much.”

Newsham started behind Jordan in third on the grid after the top six race two finishers were reversed for race three. In spite of being in a podium position for most of the race the Team ES Racing driver’s efforts were wasted after his engine blew with one lap to go.

Dave Newsham sits in sixth in the independent drivers’ championship standings after Donington, three points behind Tom Onslow-Cole in fifth and 42 points behind its current leader Andrew Jordan.