Dave Newsham elated with first BTCC victory

Dave Newsham took his first BTCC win almost unchallenged at Snetterton yesterday, taking advantage of the reversed grid race to build a lead in his Team ES Racing Vauxhall Vectra.

It was only the fourth win for an S2000 car this year in 18 rounds, but with the top NGTC cars of Honda and Jason Plato’s MG all running with weight and fighting with Tom Onslow-Cole’s BMW and Mat Jackson’s new Ford Focus, it allowed the two Vauxhall Vectras of Dave Newsham and Lea Wood to pull into the distance.

“I thought if I could get past Lea (Wood) early on and he could just keep people at bay we might be able to get away, and the tactic worked perfectly,” said Newsham to TouringCarTimes.

“I was really worried towards the end when Tom (Onslow-Cole) got through as to how much pace he would have, but he didn’t really take much out of me. The car was awesome, the car was 100% all weekend.”

Newsham was battling Jason Plato for the lead in race one, but dropped to fourth later in the race after being passed by Frank Wrathall’s Dynojet Toyota, then later Andrew Jordan’s Eurotech Racing Honda on the final lap, with the two making contact at the end of the Bentley Straight. Jordan received a warning for the incident, but the stewards didn’t take a position penalty as Newsham’s car was later found to be underweight and excluded from the results, which put him to the back of the grid for race two.

“I was gutted obviously, but that gave us the opportunity to be on the front row for the last race and get the win. Yeah, I lost a hatful of points, but then I’ve salvaged some points there as well.

“I enjoyed (the second race),, the first three laps were really good fun but I took too much out of the tyres. I was aware of that for the third race so I looked after the tyres as much as I could, and it was enough as I had fairly decent pace at the end there.”