Tom Chilton says that he “found something good” during his recent one-day test at the Hungaroring between the Hungarian and Slovakian rounds of the World Touring Car Championship, with the Brit putting his time gains at “six or seven” tenths of a second.
ROAL Motorsport’s Chilton remained at the Hungaroring during the week to complete additional testing with their new TC1 RML Cruze, testing alongside Honda and LADA in Budapest. Chilton believes that the test has benefitted him significantly as he continues to feel happier in his new car.
“I think we’ve found six or seven tenths of a second, which is a lot of time to find in one test day,” said Chilton to TouringCars.Net. “Looking at the times just then [in first free practice], I didn’t do my fast time until the end of my tyres at the end of that run, when we made some more set-up changes because we’re still learning. I’m still quite confident to [be able to] do that lap time on very old tyres. We found something good.”
Chilton adds that unlike LADA and Honda, who have not yet introduced any new parts to their cars, he and his ROAL Motorsport team will have to make do with their car as it is and find improvements through set-up tweaks and learning the car.
“We had our budget at the beginning of the year and that’s it,” added Chilton, when asked if there were plans for any development parts on the car. “At the end of the day I think we’re at a good pace for limited testing and very limited budget – the difference in money between the teams is mental.”
For Chilton the opportunity to test at the Hungaroring allows him to close the gap to Campos Racing, due to the Spanish team having carried out marginally more pre-season testing than ROAL Motorsport due to Hugo Valente having ordered his car before anyone else.
“I was the only Chevrolet testing but to be fair Campos had an advantage over us at the beginning of the year because they tested at Spa [Francorchamps] and Paul Ricard,” explained Chilton. “We tested at a circuit in Italy very close to ROAL Motorsport in case we had any problems because it’s such a new car, but that circuit was all second and third-gear corners so arguably we learnt about reliability but nothing else.
“Until Hungary it was the first time I actually had a test day. It was the first time I actually had one proper test day and actually made changes – which is why I’ve found so much time.”
Chilton was again the fastest Chevrolet driver over a single lap, as he was in Hungary, and he admits that he is aiming to get amongst the works’ teams during qualifying.
“I’m hoping to try and be breathing on Citroën’s back doors but I think that’s going to be extremely hard if I’m honest,” added Chilton. “For me it’s more about getting as close to the Honda’s as possible and trying to break [them] up – that’s what I want to do.”