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Strong qualifying at Silverstone nets Herron top three

Renault Clio Cup News | Sat 4th July 2009

Northern Ireland’s Andrew Herron can’t wait to get stuck into the 11th and 12th rounds of the ELF Renault Clio Cup at Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit tomorrow, Sunday, 5th July, after producing a strong performance in qualifying at the Northamptonshire venue this afternoon.

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The 21-year-old, who is third in the championship standings at the halfway point in the campaign, produced a best time of 2m09.566 seconds (142.8km/h) to secure fifth place on the grid for the first of tomorrow’s races but for race two, he will line-up in third position thanks to his second-best lap of 2m09.644 seconds.

Following a short break immediately after the previous two rounds of the season at Croft in North Yorkshire a fortnight ago, the Dromore-based 21-year-old headed into today’s 30-minute session without any experience of the newly revised Clio Cup race car having been forced to miss the official test day at Snetterton a little over a week ago.

Featuring a brand new front end, upgraded front suspension and several other changes compared to the car which started the 2009 season, Andrew took no time at all to get adjusted to the differences and is looking forward to putting his JHR Developments-run Clio through its paces again tomorrow in front of an expected crowd of close to 100,000 spectators.

“Qualifying today was basically like a test session for me as I didn’t have the chance to run in the car, with the new wishbone and front end, at Snetterton and then the 40-minute practice yesterday was pretty much pointless as there were about three or four stoppages”, commented Andrew.

“In the first stint, I was just feeling what the car was doing and how it was behaving and I was down in ninth place but I knew there was plenty of time to find. The car felt good straight away, I just needed to get used to the differences and when I went back out it all started coming together.”

He added: “The people in front of me on the grid for race one are all good drivers and two of them, (Stefan) Hodgetts and (Ben) Winrow, aren’t in the championship full-time anyway. I’m feeling very confident for both races and especially for the second one as we start third on the grid. Racing is always stronger than qualifying for me so if we make two good starts, we should definitely be in with a great chance.”

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