Newsham looking to go into break on a high
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A PERSONAL landmark will be reached by Dave Newsham this weekend, but it is unlikely to mean as much if he cannot go into the summer break on a high of having performed well at Croft.
Newsham, of Inverness, is set to rack up a century of racing appearances in the British Touring Car Championship when turning out for his AmDTuning.com team at the North Yorkshire circuit.
The 46-year-old will certainly be hoping for a change of luck following the disappointment of Oulton Park last time out.
Newsham was forced to withdraw from the final race of the day after an accident in the second one left his Ford Focus nursing heavy front-end damage that could not be repaired at the circuit.
With the car now fully repaired, the former Clio Cup champion is now hoping to challenge for three strong finishes during the fifth meeting of the campaign as he seeks to put the misfortune suffered in recent events firmly behind him.
The two-time BTCC race winner heads into the event sitting 17th in the title race, but will hope to push for points in all three races to lift himself up the championship standings.
Success at Croft would be all the more timely for Newsham given he is on course to reach a treble in terms of race appearances since moving to the series in 2011.
"I’m looking forward to Croft as it’s one of my favourite circuits on the calendar," he said. "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 10.
"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."
Given the work that was required to repair the Focus following Oulton Park, AmDTuning.com heads for Croft having taken the opportunity to bring forward planned upgrades to the Focus, which it had been due to undertake during the summer break.
The changes will see the car sporting a revised front end, and mean the AmD Focus is now running in the same specification as the cars being used by fellow Ford squad Airwaves Racing.
"We decided not to fit the 2014 upgrades at the start of the year as we wanted to see what impact they had," team boss Shaun Hollamby explained.
"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 races 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."
