Alex MacDowall is looking ahead to the forthcoming trip to Hungary and the Hungaroring after he had a testing weekend at the Slovakia Ring near Bratislava, scene of the fourth weekend of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship.
The twenty one year old racer from Carlisle currently sits seventh in the Yokohama Independents’ after eight races but his weekend was compromised with under steer issues during free practice and qualifying.
He lined up sixteenth on the grid for round seven of the season, and ninth Independent. He headed into the first ten lap race with renewed confidence after a promising warm up session and he made good progress up the field.
MacDowall was able to fight with the midfield runners in his bamboo engineering Chevrolet Cruze and took the chequered flag twelfth overall and ninth Independent. He finished just 0.9s behind the Proteam BMW of Mehdi Bennani while a further 0.5s up the road was reining Champion Yvan Muller in the RML Chevrolet Cruze.
The eighth round of the Championship saw MacDowall suffer another disappointment as his race ended prematurely after contact with another driver. The contact damaged his steering and despite recovering the car to the pits, his hopes of a top ten finish were extinguished.
“I went up the inside of a BMW at turn seven and we were side-by-side for the next corner but another BMW must have locked-up on the other side of me as the next thing I knew, I’d been hit and it bent the steering”, explained Alex, “It was far too optimistic, I’m not cross-eyed so I can’t see cars coming from two different directions at the same time!
“It’s disappointing as the car felt a lot better in the races then it did all weekend up to that point, we had new tyres as we didn’t get through to Q2 so that helped as well. The team found a better set-up though overnight after qualifying so, following the warm-up, I felt pretty confident.”
Looking back over the weekend, MacDowall added: “In the first race I decided to try and stay out of trouble as much as possible, a lot of cars went off, so I just wanted a sensible finish. In the second race I didn’t make the best of starts but I chipped away though and made up ground, to be taken out by a stupid move was very annoying.”
Looking ahead, MacDowall believes that the Hungaroring is more akin to a British Touring Car Championship circuit: “It’s been a pretty hectic few weeks but I’m really looking forward to next weekend, I think Hungary will suit is”, said Alex, “Most of the tracks on the WTCC calendar are wide with big corners, they don’t apex like those on a UK circuit and that’s what I’m having to get used to. Hungaroring is more like a UK track in that respect so I’m hoping we can challenge right near the front.”