BTCC 2011 - BRANDS HATCH
The top three drivers in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship are all ‘playing it cool’ ahead of the dramatic season’s penultimate round on Brands Hatch’s Grand Prix circuit this weekend (1-2 Oct).
Honda pair Matt Neal and ‘Flash’ Gordon Shedden will go into the event tying for the outright championship lead, 24 points clear of their nearest rival Jason Plato in his Chevrolet. For the record, Neal and Shedden’s Civics will start the weekend carrying 36kgs of success ballast and Plato’s Silverline-backed Cruze 27kgs.
Worcestershire’s Neal insists there are no signs of tension within his Honda Racing squad as he and Scottish team-mate Shedden aim to steal any advantage they can this weekend prior to the season finale at Silverstone just a fortnight later (15-16 Oct).
Double Champion Neal told btcc.net: “There’s still a fifth of the season – six races – to go, so there are no nerves creeping in yet and of course it can all change so quickly.
“I’m sure it might start getting a bit tense going to Silverstone but ‘Flash’ and I just need to keep working together which has been our biggest strength. Jason really isn’t all that far behind us and there are so many variables to consider.
“It looks like being a hot weekend which is good news for the ice cream man but not necessarily us. Brands GP is probably second only to Rockingham when it comes to taking it out of the tyres. It could be we have to run slightly higher tyre pressures and less camber which can hinder performance.”
Fife racer Shedden, hunting his first BTCC title, added: “Everything is as it always has been within the team – equal cars, equal treatment and now equal points and equal ballast!
“The most important thing we’ve said all along is to get Honda over the line first. I can understand people on the outside thinking that’s a bit tame from a driver who’s not won it before and, of course, on a personal level there is a burning desire and passion to win it. But Matt and I drive for a factory team so there is also a bigger picture to consider.
“There are a lot of cars and drivers out there easily capable of mixing up the order and denying all three of us valuable points – if we find ourselves behind Jason then we have to make sure it’s by as few places as possible.”
Oxford’s Plato, the reigning Champion, believes this weekend is where his hopes of retaining his 2010 crown stall. He’s qualified on pole position at three of the last four rounds and knows a repeat performance tomorrow (Saturday) is his best hope of keeping up the pressure.
But he said: “There’ll only be nine kilos of ballast between our cars this time and at Rockingham there were lots of ‘combination corners’ which suits the Chevrolet, but on the Brands GP circuit each corner tends to be followed by a decent-sized straight so I don’t think I’ll be quite so competitive in qualifying this time.
“The turbo cars should gobble us up on the straights and I’m the only driver in an S2000 car with ballast, so I’m expecting to be way down through the speed traps. The Chevrolet is in a league of its own on the brakes and in the corners, but the laws of physics mean there is a limit and we’re already extracting the absolute maximum from the car in each qualifying session and race. I doubt what we make up on the twisty bits will be enough to save us on the straights – there is only so much you can do.”
"I don't want to be treated as special because I'm not. I just drive a racing car round in circles a bit faster than everyone else." Michael Schumacher
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Originally Posted by Greig
) He knew that if he let Neal "rip his ****ing face off" as promised that he wouldn't be able to moan with quite the same voracity so he intervined in his own future which on the plus side means he still has a face with which to continue to race and moan but on the negative side theres that paradox of quantum mechanics that stops you from affecting your own future by going back in time and altering it when it's already happened.
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