Steven Kane in qualifying at Brands Hatch
So, here we are after qualifying at Brands Hatch. In Carrera Cup we had a very good day. We qualified on pole in each class. Touring car wise, we’ve got a bit of work to do. I don’t quite know what happened today. We didn’t quite hit the window we were expecting to hit.
Rockingham was ok. It was nice to bank more points, it was nice to come out of the place with Airwaves BMW still leading the championship. It was nice to have two podiums.
I’m quite upset that Mat got some damage from Mr Chilton. He got quite badly damaged and with the back-to-back race weekends, it’s a lot to ask of a team at the best of times. Our particular team has to prep eight cars, so we were very mindful of coming away from Rockingham with cars that we could actually repair and prepare for Brands Hatch.
Really we had to have everything back in the truck for Wednesday night so we could go for shakedown, park up or whatever. Everything was done by Wednesday night, so thanks to all the boys. They did really, really well and showed what they can do.
Then we’ve come here and we’ve obviously got some work to do. We don’t expect at the moment to be qualifying as well as we have in the past. The gearing has changed and the tyres have changed.
It seems that the tyres have gone to the front wheel drive cars more than the rear wheel drive cars. We get our advantage back a little bit once we start racing. The tyres tend to go off a little bit and the BMWs come to life when theirs go off.
Unfortunately that doesn’t happen so much on the Brands GP track, because it’s a circuit where every car can stretch its legs and get a bit of respite for the tyres.
I think we’re going to have our work cut out. We’ve not turned in a good performance in qualifying. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of that.
You’ve got to say that Rob Collard has done a good job to get the BMW up to fifth. That’s always our reserve benchmark. We can always tell if it’s a bad BMW weekend, like we could at Rockingham, if the three main BMWs are all together. This weekend, Rob’s sitting there in fifth and we’re not. That means we’ve got something wrong, so it’s our job now to find that, sort it out and get our car right for tomorrow.
We’re just going to have to battle the hard way. We’re going to have to come through the pack, hope the front guys don’t get away too far and then do our job from that position. We’ll try and build our results over the course of the three races.
I want rain. I want it to absolutely pour down. That will be the best leveller for us. Rain brings in another skill set for the cars and it brings in another skill set for the drivers. It also means that all cars – front and rear wheel drive – suddenly become very equal. What I don’t want is drizzle. The BMW doesn’t work well in the drizzle. I want it wet or dry.
What we’ve got to concentrate on doing is keeping our noses clean, keeping out of trouble and scoring points. If you have one weekend but still score some points, it means you can move on to the next weekend and you’re still in it. We’re chasing the championship this year and we need to bank points in every single round.
Tags: Airwaves BMW, brands hatch, BTCC 2010, David Bartrum
