The United Autosports team remain upbeat about their venture into the British Touring Car Championship, despite another trying weekend which saw one of their Toyota Avensis’ written off.
Although the team were able to score their second points of the season as Glynn Geddie finished in 13th in race two of the day at Donington Park, round five of the season also saw Cole involved in a huge shunt with Robb Holland, with both cars in no fit state to return to action and the United Autosports machine soon to be scrapped.
Speaking to TouringCars.Net at the time, Cole was clearly downbeat about the incident, and expressed his disappointment post-race after all the efforts his team had gone to during the pre-season to get his car ready.
“I had made a very good start in the second race, getting ahead of at least four cars from off the grid but then I got spun around at Redgate,” said the 25 year-old. “I resumed at the back of the field with the tracking slightly out only for all hell to break out going down Craner Curves. I made contact with Rob Holland after avoiding Rob Austin, who was rejoining the track and I ended up contacting the wall heavily.
“Unfortunately my Toyota is completely written off – the United Autosports guys who’ve already done a great job just getting the cars on the grid for the start of the season, didn’t deserve this latest setback.”
Geddie was however able to take some positives from the weekend having earned his first three points in the championship, as he continues to learn the car.
“At times today we had a ‘raceable’ car which means we’re making progress which at this stage in the car’s development is all that can be asked for,” said the Scot. “I expected more from race 2 but having to go out on unscrubbed new wets meant it going to be difficult then in the last race I suffered a gear selection issue causing my retirement. I really felt a top-10 result was on the cards for us in that race but we showed some promise.”
Managing Director and owner Richard Dean took a similar view on the weekend with the team learning more and more about their machines and the series as they go on, but conceded it would be an uphill struggle to be in good shape for the third meeting of the season at Thruxton in less than two weeks’ time.
“We’ve learnt more in the opening six races than we did in all of our admittedly limited pre-season testing. Glynn running just outside the top-10 at times is a positive to take back to the race shop in Leeds,” said Dean. “James endured a character building weekend, getting taken out in the second race due to no fault of his own which destroyed his chassis and therefore prevented him from starting the third race.
“So that element alone means that we have a lot of work to do in what is effectively just an eight day turnaround before we head to the next races at Thruxton.”