Norfolk based Team Petronas Syntium Proton went in to rounds 13 and 14 on ‘home-ground’ at Snetterton with high hopes after a very successful test session at Donington Park where the team worked on the damper/roll-bar package. Qualifying brought further reason to be optimistic, with David Leslie putting in his best performance of the year.

At the start of the season, the team were 2.5 seconds off the pole position pace, but now, the gap is down to 1 second. The relatively small team has managed to make up 1.5 seconds on the likes of Vauxhall and Honda over the first half of the season. Development has been restricted to race weekends, with the strict testing restrictions hitting the team hard.

David Leslie commented, “For various reasons we were restricted with what we could do during the winter, so those restrictions have hurt us. Whereas, the likes of MG, Honda and Vauxhall, who were out doing a lot of testing before the season started, got through most of their work before the season. They’re now able to do little bits of work and fine-tune what they’ve got. We are unfortunately having to do the bigger pieces in the two forty-minute sessions at the meetings. So yes, it has hurt us a little bit more than anyone else, but that was down to us, because we didn’t do as much during the winter as the rest did.”

However the Malaysian marque now feels that it has probably made as much progress as possible for this year. Whilst during the early stages of the season, the team was making small changes during each of the practice sessions, there is now a certain degree of consistency, allowing the drivers to get to grips with the car. At Snetterton, Phil Bennett found himself battling towards the front of the pack, but was once again the victim of bad luck. He said, “I was pleased with my pace in the first outing and enjoyed dicing for 6th in the second race. I'm gutted I couldn't turn pace into points in both races.”

David Leslie found himself caught up in the carnage that was the opening few metres of Saturday’s first race, leading to retirement on the opening lap. In the second race of the day, he finished in 9th position. Leslie commented, “We didn't have a chance to show our real performance improvement but in the second race I was lapping faster than the poleman and notched up more points. The car really feels good now - we've learned a lot."

The atmosphere within the Team PSP camp is a positive one. The team, formed from scratch before the 2002 season is gelling under the supervision of new-for-2003 technical director, Mike Carroll, and progress during the season has been encouraging. With the 2003 season moving in to its final stages, the focus for Team PSP is shifting towards next year and building & developing two new cars that can be competitive from the start of the season, with the intention of challenging for that all-important first race victory as early as possible.

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