Alex MacDowall encountered a tough weekend at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia, the venue for rounds three and four of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship.
Having come away from Monza as the joint Championship leader in the Yokohama Independents Championship, the bamboo engineering driver accepted that the second weekend of the season at the 4kilometer Spanish circuit would prove to be a tougher test.
Running once again with the maximum ballast, due to the continued success of the works Chevrolets of RML, the former BTCC driver had a mountain to climb to achieve his aim of scoring points.
MacDowall headed into the weekend without any prior testing and his first time out on track was the first practice session Saturday morning and neither MacDowall nor the bamboo engineering squad could find a suitable set up or balance. This is turn meant that MacDowall missed out on the second part of qualifying.
Setting a best time of 1m43.951, MacDowall was within a second of the outright Pole Position time and 0.7s off the Yokohama Independents Pole Position, but left down in fourteenth and 0.1s off the top twelve.
“After a bad qualifying we knew it would be tough in the races, carrying all that ballast did hurt us a lot,” commented MacDowall. “ Obviously I can’t be that happy, but when you consider we’re running 50 kilograms heavier than the SEATs and 40 kilograms heavier than the BMWs it’s not been such a bad weekend on a track that just didn’t suit us.”
Round three of the Championship proved to be an uneventful one for the Cumbrian driver. Having slipped down to fifteenth during the early stages he fought back and retook fourteenth on the fifth lap.
He held the position until the final lap when fellow Yokohama Independents driver Mehdi Bennani took the position and demoted MacDowall down to eighth in class and fourteenth overall.
The second race of the day, round four of the Championship saw MacDowall once again line up on the seventh row. He moved into thirteenth on the opening lap before dropping back to eighth in class the following lap, before moving back to seventh in class when Darryl O’Young dropped out on the fourth lap.
The bamboo engineering driver held his position until the eighth lap when he was demoted to eighth in class and fourteenth overall. MacDowall then held the position until the flag to bring home his second points finish of the day for the Yokohama Independents, a feat which looked unlikely at the start of the weekend.
MacDowall added about the standards of driving in the WTCC: “The driving standards in WTCC are a lot higher than in Britain, the drivers just don’t make mistakes – I tried to put as much pressure on people as I could but they didn’t crack. Valencia is a very hard track to overtake on anyway, it was a very tough weekend but to score points is good.”
Leaving Valencia, MacDowall has slipped down to fifth in the Yokohama Independents with sixteen points and eleventh in the overall Championship.
“At least we got a point in each race and didn’t bin it”, commented Alex, “If I can keep plugging away on weekends when things aren’t going so well then we’ll be in the mix, but we still need to do better than we have here in Valencia.”
Next up for MacDowall is a trip to Africa and Marrakech over the 14/15 April, and for the Cumbrian racer, it will mark his first ever street race.
“I’m sure Marrakech will suit us a lot more than Valencia”, added the WTCC rookie, “It’ll be my first ever time racing on a street circuit but hopefully we’ll be back where we should be and fighting for the Independents podium.”