AmDTuning boss hits out at Croft contact

AmDTuning.com team boss Shaun Hollamby has expressed frustration at the amount of contact during the final race of the BTCC weekend at Croft.

Both of the team’s Audi S3s were caught up in incidents on track in the third race, with Ollie Jackson being knocked out of the lead in the early stages and team-mate Ant Whorton-Eales also in the wars in the sister car.

Whorton-Eales in particular found himself on the wrong end of some rough driving on track, which started on the opening lap at the exit of Clervaux when contact from the Vauxhall of Senna Proctor saw him run into the VW of Mike Epps.

More contact during the course of the race meant his car returned to the paddock nursing extensive panel damage afterwards, with team boss Hollamby releasing a video after the weekend to detail the state in which the car had returned to the workshop.

“I didn’t see the cars at the weekend as I was at British GT, but Ant’s car after race three has damage the left rear and right rear,” he said. “The right hand side isn’t too bad but there is damage to the front right, across the front, the left hand door and the sill is punched in. No-one got any penalties for any of the damage that was done to this car – and I’m not sure that’s right.

“There was so much contact in race three at Croft and nobody seems to be to blame, and other drivers didn’t have the balls to come and discuss it afterwards. In contrast Mat Jackson did come and it discuss with Ollie after the race.”

Whorton-Eales himself was also left frustrated by the contact that had prevented him from trying to build on eleventh place in the second race of the weekend, which had marked the best result of his BTCC career to date.

“I was really happy with where we were after the second race as we’d made good forward progress and came close to breaking into the top ten,” he said. “We’d made some changes ahead of the second race and the car was strong on the harder tyre, and I felt confident we could continue to push forwards in race three.

“Unfortunately, I got smashed out of the way by other people in race three which is really annoying, but that is how it is sometimes in touring cars. We’ve certainly showed this weekend that we have the pace, and there is no reason why we couldn’t have joined Ollie in bringing home a top ten finish.”