Nick Leason: It’s all in the signs

It was a very late deal that saw Nick Leason switch to the BTC Racing Lexus IS200 for 2007. Having previously confirmed that he would be driving the Vauxhall Astra Coupe in which he ended the 2007 season, Leason was unveiled at BTC Racing at the Rockingham media day.

As late as the deal was, it was not as late as the cars were arriving for Brands Hatch: “I think my car turned up about quarter past one on Saturday morning”, said Leason. “And Chris’ [Stockton] was about four o’clock in the morning. It literally hadn’t turned a wheel.”

“We’ve done a lot of development, but all weekend we’ve been low on power on my engine. We knew we had a bit of a problem with that particular engine and finally it let go. We had the first race, which was ok in the race situation. We were losing seven miles per hour on the straight. We got 15th and we thought we’d be all right for the second race, but unfortunately it let go as we came out. That was it really. End of story.”

Leason’s teammate Chris Stockton showed signs of pace over the weekend at Brands Hatch, finishing 10th in race two. Leason is confident that pace will continue to improve as the team has time to tweak the cars.

“There is some good potential there. We’ll go to Rockingham with phase two of the engine. It won’t be the finished product, but hopefully it should make us a little bit more aggressive.”