Putting In The Hard Yards

So what does happen during a BTCC test day? Matt James found out.

- Matt James

When the lights go off to begin the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch on April 2, the season will blast into life. But the hard yards will have been put in during the months leading up to that first on-track clash.

Teams have been thrashing around the circuits of the UK, Spain and Portugal for months in the build up to the 30 competitive rounds that will take place.

But can that mileage really make the difference between winning and losing? The BTCC pack is often separated by only fractions of a second and can those vital gains be found pounding around a cold Snetterton, for example?

Rob Austin had a substantial programme booked at the beginning of the season to unearth more pace from his Handy Motorsport Toyota Avensis. MN joined him at Brands Hatch earlier in the year to find out exactly what goes on in the garage.

“Towards the end of last year, we started along a set-up path that was working,” explains Austin. “We were going in the right direction but when you are racing, you can only make small changes because you can’t afford to go really wrong – there is too much at stake. But we had lots of ideas that we really wanted to try so that is what pre-season testing is for. It is for the bigger changes that take longer to put on the car.”

The process of mapping out a testing programme is something that starts as soon as the flag falls on the season before.

“We came up with a list of changes and, in our testing so far, we have run through all of them,” says Austin. “Some of them haven’t worked and some have. The trouble is, everything with the car set-up is a compromise. If you gain somewhere, you are going to lose somewhere else. It is all about coming up with the best overall compromise. We have managed to make the front end a lot stronger so that has then given us a different focus to the rear end of the car.”