Chilton contemplates challenges ahead

Mon 23rd March 2009 2009 marks Tom Chilton’s eighth year in the British Touring Car Championship and he’s back in familiar surroundings with Mike Earle’s Arena Motorsport.

Chilton and Arena will contest the season with a Ford Focus ST under the Team Aon banner with a car that they have developed from scratch over the winter. Testing so far has been limited, with a recent trip to Spain proving fruitless as the conditions were, unbelievably, too hot. So the recent media day and test session at Rockingham should have provided some valuable track time.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it started, with the Focus stuck in the garage for the early stages of the session as the team worked on the engine.

“I’ve been here long enough now to know that things like this happen”, said Chilton. “Yes, it’s frustrating because you’ve got all these people here and it’s quite nice to get out and get a bit of a benchmark, but realistically we’ve got to get lots of basic things sorted on the car before we start pounding around. We’ve literally done about four days testing and you ask anyone who’s ever developed a car and you need at least three weeks’ running to get the things pretty good, so we’re still very early days.”

When Chilton first drove in the BTCC, he was just 17 years old. Seven years on, he’s mature beyond his years and a real pro’ when it comes to preparing for yet another new season.

“I’ve been here a long time. This is my eighth year. I’ve done 170 race starts I think now, so I have been around and seen it all. I’ve worked with lots of different teammates. I’m happy that I’m still in the championship and people want me to drive their cars. I love it.”

Chilton’s first season in the BTCC was with Barwell Motorsport, but the next three were spent with Arena Motorsport. He has also raced sportscars for Arena and clearly feels at home with the team.

“It was really nice when I got this phone call from Mike [Earle] saying ‘we’ve got this sponsor Aon and we’re looking at using the Ford Focus ST chassis’. Unfortunately in the current climate, we can’t get a works deal together. It’s the hardest time we’ve had in the economy for a long time and for me to actually be putting my bottom in a racing seat is great in itself, and even better that’s it’s the British Touring Cars.”

When we spoke to Chilton, we were sat in the pitlane outside the Arena garage, with the team tweaking the engine on the Focus ahead of putting in some valuable laps. Every so often, his attention drifted to the engine note coming from the car and you could sense the anticipation as it came closer to getting out on the track.

The Arena Ford Focus is still very early in its life-cycle and track time has been limited, but Chilton is already full of his typical enthusiasm, albeit tempered by a little bit of apprehension towards the challenge ahead.

“It’s so early days. It’s so early to tell you how I feel with the car. We’re still not doing more than a couple of laps at a time running. It’s still very early days. We’ve got a lot happening before the first round. We’ve got the other car being built. We haven’t got a teammate yet, but we’ve got the car ready. We’ve got loads of geometry and stuff. We’ve got new changes for Tuesday at Brands Hatch. I’ve just got to go round and test them and see what feels better or worse.

“It’s the first time in my life I’ve been able to set a car up from scratch. It is really nice. It’s a shame we can’t do more laps, because to set a car up you need to do plenty of laps. I really am happy that I’m with Arena Motorsport, who are such a great team. It’s just going to take time. It’s going to take time. But it we will get there.”

The highlight of Chilton’s 2008 season was a win in the final round at Brands Hatch. The 2009 season starts at the same circuit, but surely a win first time out would be too much to ask. But, just what would be acceptable?

“A good season would be to get a few more wins. I really want to try and win the Independents’ Cup. You’ve got a lot of BMWs out there that are independents, and this their third year. It’s the third year for Vauxhall, and even those SEATs, they were the original petrol engine ones, so everyone’s got so much data with these cars around these circuits. I can tell the team all the information in the world, I could give everything perfect, but you still can’t get it there where it should be, because you’re competing against three years worth of experience of that car going round a circuit in different temperatures and weathers. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.”