Ton up for Dave Newsham with 2014-spec Focus

Dave Newsham will contest his 100th BTCC race at Croft this weekend, in an AmD Tuning Ford Focus sporting an upgraded 2014 front end.

The 2010 Clio Cup champion is now running the same specification Focus ST as Motorbase Performance, who team boss Shaun Hollamby bought the car from over the winter.

The team wasn’t planning to fit the upgrades until the summer break, but after Newsham sustained hefty front-end damage in race two at Oulton Park, they decided to bring the work forward.

Newsham said: “It’ll be nice to hit 100 races at Croft as I didn’t think it was a mark I would reach when I first joined the BTCC. It’s fantastic for me to be here and hopefully I can celebrate the landmark with a good result to make sure we go into the summer break on a high.

“I’m looking forward to Croft as it’s one of my favourite circuits on the calendar. It’s quite hard on tyres but one of the strengths of our car is that it is good on its tyres, so that could help us on race day.

“Hopefully the weather will be dry so we can work on our qualifying pace, but Croft is a circuit where it is possible to pass and to work your way forwards through the field.

“Even if we don’t qualify as high as we want, we can still look to race forwards, and we know we have a car that will allow us to push towards the top ten.”

Assessing the decision to upgrade the car early, team boss Hollamby said: “We decided not to fit the 2014 upgrades at the start of the year as we wanted to see what impact they had.

“Our plan was to update the car during the summer break, but following the accident at Oulton Park, it made sense to do it now and debut the revised front end at Croft. It’ll be interesting to see what impact the update has, as we’ll now be able to measure ourselves more directly with the guys at Motorbase.

“We learned a lot again at Oulton Park despite what happened, and the aim for this weekend is to have three trouble free race and pick up some points. We know we have to try and qualify better, and even though I’m not sure it’ll be the strongest circuit for our car, I’m confident that Dave will be able to get the job done on Sunday and bring home some points before the summer break.”