Fourth place for Rob at Croft

Rounds 13, 14 & 15 of the 2005 British Touring Car Championship at Croft
July 16/17, 2005

Podium proves elusive once again

Rounds 13, 14 and 15 of the 2005 British Touring Car Championship took place at the Croft circuit in North Yorkshire. For Rob and the West Surrey Racing team, it was a weekend that improved as it went on. Difficulties in finding an effective setup for the MG ZS in qualifying were cast aside on raceday, as Rob scored two top five finishes, ensuring his best points haul since the opening meeting of the season at Donington Park.

Ahead of the weekend, Rob joined a number of other BTCC drivers in giving demonstration runs along the quayside in NewcastleGateshead in what was the series’ first ever street demonstration. The event took place on the Thursday evening preceding the Croft weekend, and attracted an impressive crowd of 5000 enthusiastic onlookers.

“It was something a bit different”, said Rob. “It was good to do a few runs in the car, and I think the crowd enjoyed it. It’s all good publicity for the series.”

Rob was joined by a new sponsor for the weekend - Marubeni-Komatsu (www.komatsu.co.uk) - the UK distributor for the Komatsu range of construction equipment.

Free practice and qualifying on Saturday frustrated Rob and the team, as they struggled to get the car behaving as desired.

“We just struggled to get the traction that we need out of some of the corners”, said Rob after qualifying. “It is frustrating because it is very close, and we are not all that far off the pace. Hopefully we’ll be able to make up a few places in the first race and get a better starting position for the second one.”

And that was exactly what happened in the weekend’s opening race. Rob takes up the story: “As always, I made a good start and beat James [Kaye] into the first corner. I think I could have done Smith a bit earlier but I sat behind him and then picked him off going into the Complex. He left the door wide open and let me get past him there. I then chased after Eaves, and for a couple of laps I thought I was going to be in with a chance. But they just edged a way a little bit and broke the tow. I just couldn’t stick with them really, so I ended up just being out there on a limb. I caught up a little bit when Eaves overtook Chilton, but apart from that it was quite a boring race for me really, just sitting there banging in some laps.”

Among those laps was the fastest lap of the race, proving the pace of the MG. The race was red flagged and the result declared after 11 laps, leaving Rob in seventh position.

In the second race, Rob was quickly up to sixth position, benefiting from a clash between Jason Plato and Matt Neal that dropped Neal’s Integra down through the pack. With Yvan Muller leading the race, the second VX Racing Astra Sport Hatch, in the hands of Colin Turkington, was causing a queue for second place, and Rob was among this front running group, behind Plato, Dan Eaves and Tom Chilton.

Rob made up further places thanks to another Plato clash – this time with the second of the Team Halfords Integras, driven by Dan Eaves. Both drivers were slowed as they collided and ran off the track, promoting Rob to fourth position, where he remained through to the chequered flag.

With the top ten finishers in race two being reversed to form the grid for race two, a fourth place finish for Rob meant sixth spot on the grid for the final race of the day, which was live on ITV1.

Making another of his trademark lightning starts, Rob moved straight past the Vauxhall of Gavin Smith and up onto the tail of Matt Neal’s Honda Integra, which he also found a way past on the second lap. Next up was Luke Hines in the SEAT Toledo Cupra. It took Rob until just lap three to get past Hines, moving into a podium position.

Unfortunately it was not to be, as Matt Neal’s Honda came on strong after the opening few laps, and the championship leader edged Rob out of third place. As Neal passed James Pickford to move up to second, Rob also got closer to the SEAT, only for Jason Plato to work his way through the field and demote Rob to fifth in the closing stages of the race.

With three top ten finishes over the weekend, Rob picks up the third place cheque for £2000 in the Independents Cup and bolsters his points tally as the season hits the halfway mark.

Rob commented, “We’ve struggled on power this weekend. We’re one of the slowest cars in the speed traps, which is a little bit worrying. So we need to try and find some more horsepower before Mondello.”

“It’s a little bit annoying when we expected to come here and do well. We’ve still had some very good results though, so we shouldn’t be too disheartened. We’ve had to be very careful this weekend because we’ve only got four days to turn the car around for Mondello.”

Rob heads straight over to the Emerald Isle for rounds 16, 17 and 18 of the championship at Mondello Park near Dublin, this coming weekend, 23/14 July.