Pinkney targets points on Silverstone raceday

Sun 22nd August 2010 David Pinkney will start the opening Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Silverstone from 14th on the grid after qualifying at the Home of British Motorsport.

The Harpenden-racer headed to Silverstone looking to build on his top ten finish last time out at Snetterton and was an encouraging tenth quickest in the opening free practice session – just three-tenths of a second behind Tom Chilton’s Ford Focus.

While David then went quicker than he had in practice during the all-important qualifying session, the pace at the front was such that the gap to the LPG-powered Ford’s increased to 1.5 seconds, although the times were closer through the rest of the field.

Despite being little more than half a second slower than Andrew Jordan in sixth place, the Pinkney Motorsport Vauxhall Vectra will start the opening race of the weekend from the seventh row of the grid with David admitting there was some frustration at the way qualifying had panned out.

“If I’d set that time in first free practice it would have been good enough for fourth place,” he said. “While we found time during the day, the others were able to find more. The car is good and I was on the limit, but it’s frustrating when you do a lap that feels awesome in the car and then find the cars at the front are so far ahead.”

Team manager Andrew Dean said the team had worked hard to improve the car over a race distance as it seeks to secure its seventh top-ten finish of the year in Sunday’s three races.

“We seem to have made 14th place on the grid our own this season,” he said. “We have gone quicker during the day, but the others have found more time than us. We made a significant change to the car before qualifying which should make the car more driveable over a race distance and we aren’t in a bad position to start race day. We have to try and work our way forwards as we did at Snetterton to try and bring home some points.”