After the streets of Marrakech, Alex MacDowall and the bamboo engineering team head to Slovakia and the Slovakia Ring near Bratislava for the seventh and eighth rounds of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship.
The Slovakia Ring is one of the longest circuits in Europe and the Carlisle based racer is looking to bounce back from a tough weekend in Morocco.
Having proved his speed in the bamboo engineering Chevrolet Cruze, he had two unfortunate races including a retirement in the sixth round – the second race around the streets of Marrakech.
Arriving in Slovakia, all the drivers will start on a level playing field as the six kilometre circuit makes its debut in the World Touring Car Championship and the field won’t get any extra track time so the first time the drivers will see the circuit is free practice one Saturday morning.
“I’ve looked at the track on the internet through some You Tube videos and it does look quite twisty, so I think it will favour the BMWs”, said the Bamboo Engineering driver, “I think we still have a good chance to stick the car up there on the grid though in qualifying, that’s where we’ve been strong so far this year.
“We don’t have any more testing than usual so working on race runs in the practice time we do have will be more important than going for qualifying pace. It’s an important weekend to get back up the points table, hopefully we’ll be able to do that and close the gap a bit.”
Last time out, MacDowall was able to score three points in the Yokohama Independents but his WTCC debut at Monza means that after six races, he is still fifth in the standings. He is aiming to recover some of the lost ground from Valencia and Marrakech against the Independent SEAT’s and BMW’s.
“The last couple of events have been a bit unfortunate, it all went pretty much to plan at Monza but it’s been a bit downhill from there since so the aim next weekend is to try and get back to where we were at Monza”, said the 21-year-old, “I need to start fighting my way back up the points in the Independents championship, we just need to turn a good qualifying into two strong race results.
“I know I’m just as good as the other Independent guys, they’ve just got more experience in WTCC and that’s all the difference has been. We’re getting there though, hopefully in Slovakia we’ll be able to have another good qualifying, like in Marrakech, but turn it into some big points finishes.”
Free Practice ahead of rounds seven and eight of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship takes place at 08.45 and 11.30 Saturday morning with qualifying at 14.00. Sunday sees the traditional 15 minute warm up session before the races taking place at 13.20 and 14.35 UK time. The races will be shown live on Eurosport.