Speedworks Motorsport’s Dave Newsham admits that he ‘couldn’t see the end of his bonnet’ after scoring his best result of the season in the final race at Croft, taking a fifth-placed finish in extremely wet conditions.
Newsham faced an uphill battle from the start of the weekend after only managing 13th in qualifying due to struggling with power steering problems. He then retired from race one with suspension damage, due to contact between Adam Morgan and Jeff Smith.
“I got down the inside of Smith into the hairpin but Adam Morgan gave me a tap which just pushed the rear of my car into Jeff’s car,” said Newsham to TouringCars.Net of his race one retirement. “It just bent the rear toe. It felt like next to nothing and finished my race. Exactly the same happened at Donington. It’s almost like a single seater! I don’t understand it.
“We made it hard for ourselves really. Qualifying didn’t go very well where we had a power steering issues and we got suspension damage in the first race.”
The Scot battled back to ninth from 17th on the grid in the second race and just missed out on the race three reverse grid after number eight was pulled. Nevertheless, Newsham fought his way up to fifth by the fourth lap of the final race and was running in fourth for much of the race, before losing out to Gordon Shedden on the penultimate lap.
“Going in to ‘Sunny In’ on the previous lap it was fine, there was plenty of grip through there but on the following lap there was a river going across it and it fired me off,” continued Newsham. “I went completely sideways and had to just bail out. I thought I had managed to keep him [Shedden] at bay but then we went off.
“The conditions were terrible – you just couldn’t see. In the first few laps I couldn’t see the end of my bonnet. It was treacherous but it was just a case of staying on the track.”
Commenting on the first half of the season, Newsham admits that it has been a frustrating year but the 45 year-old is optimistic for the second half of the year.
“It’s been really frustrating because we just don’t seem to have had any luck,” added the Scot. “We’ve had a lot of DNFs through one thing and another. But we’ve got the car going quite well now so the second half of this season should be fairly strong for us. Adam went quite well in this car last year at Snett so there’s no reason why we can’t be right up there.
“It’s so competitive – more so than it was last year I’d say. You can’t have a DNF in this paddock, especially in the first race. If you do get a DNF in the first race you’re on the back foot for the rest of the weekend.
“These cars are very delicate – they only take a slight knock. We’ve had three DNFs through slight contact that last year wouldn’t have even done anything to the Vectra.”