The United Autosports British Touring Car Championship team are hoping that points will start to match their continuing progress as the series heads to Rockingham for rounds 22, 23 and 24 of the 2014 season.
The squad went into the previous weekend at Knockhill believing they had taken a step forward and for driver Glynn Geddie the visit to his ‘home’ event appeared to be a step in the right direction as he secured his and the team’s best starting position of 11th.
But the early promise turned to dismay as the team failed to score a point, with Geddie registering a best result on 19th after contact from Nick Foster in race one while teammate James Cole was unable to crack the top 20 in any of the weekend’s sessions.
Heading back south of the border, 26-year-old Cole was nevertheless anticipating a better weekend at the Northamptonshire circuit, having previously won in single seaters at the track.
“The team and I are feeling a lot more upbeat heading into the Rockingham weekend,” said Cole. “Glynn showed the car is starting to show pace in qualifying. I am hoping for a trouble-free weekend with no reliability issues. If we can achieve this we should be able to achieve some positive steps forward.
“I have enjoyed good success at Rockingham winning in both Formula Ford and Formula 3. The anti-clockwise nature and aggressive surface brings its own challenges to tyre management. I’m hoping to put my winning experience to good use.”
Geddie too has pedigree at the circuit, but the Scotsman insisted that there was plenty of work to be done over the weekend to secure better results.
“Rockingham is a very different track from the others we race on the BTCC with is banked corners,” said the 24-year-old. “I have had a lot of good results in the past there racing Porsches and in the British GT Championship. Knockhill showed we’re making steps forward but we still have a long way to go.
“We must aim at the top-10 in qualifying but also work needs to be done on our race pace. We are fast for 10-15 laps in a race but then suffer a huge performance drop off with our tyres. That said, Rockingham is hard on tyres so we need to do a lot of work in the free practice sessions.”