Honda Yuasa Racing believes that it is well placed to challenge for top honours in the 2015 British Touring Car Championship season, after officially launching its new Civic Type R at the series’ Media Day at Donington Park.
After announcing last week that it would race the marque’s newest model in 2015, the team lifted the covers on its eagerly-awaited livery for the coming campaign during the Season Launch, where it also had the chance to see how it stacked up against the competition during the series’ only official pre-season test.
The session ran less smoothly, however, with Gordon Shedden causing one of two red flags and struggling with throttle issues throughout the session – although Matt Neal was able to complete 35 laps on his way to setting the 12th fastest time.
Three-time champion Neal was satisfied with his running, and remained confident that the car, like its livery, would be a big hit when the championship starts at Brands Hatch next weekend.
“First of all, I have to say this car looks mega!” he said. “It’s a completely new animal this year, so this is all a learning curve for us. We’ve essentially been trying to run through a checklist, finding out what works and what doesn’t work and what effect different changes have on the car.
“The bottom line is that this car is an improvement in practically every area over what we’ve run before – and it’s probably the most powerful Honda engine we’ve ever had in the BTCC. Of course, the proof of the pudding will come during qualifying at Brands Hatch – but we’re very confident of mounting a serious challenge this year.”
Despite a lack of track time, Shedden was equally optimistic about the potential of his new machine.
“Like with any new car, we encountered a few shakedown gremlins that limited our running today, but we will work through them,” he added. “Despite not getting that many laps on the board here, we still learnt a lot and most importantly, the attention-to-detail on the new Civic Type R is fantastic. We are incredibly excited by the potential of this car!”
Team Manager James Rodgers was thrilled to see the positive reaction to the cars’ liveries, and believed there was plenty more to come from Neal and Shedden after a day of conservative running.
“The car created a huge buzz and stirred up plenty of interest amongst both media and fans,” he said. “We’d much rather have the kind of issues we saw today crop up now than at the first round – that’s what testing is for. We ran conservatively to learn as much as possible about the car; we weren’t chasing lap times by any stretch of the imagination and didn’t show anything like our full hand.”