Team BMR remain confident that the Subaru Levorg will continue to get quicker as it’s development curve continues at the third Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship meeting of the season next weekend [7th-8th May] at Thruxton.
Electing to focus on fine-tuning the new works Subaru model in the early stages of the new campaign as opposed to racing, the defending Teams and Independents champions head to the notoriously difficult 2.4 mile Hampshire venue placed 12th, a total of 135 points adrift of current standings leaders Honda.
Donington Park was another progressive meeting for the four cars, with Colin Turkington scoring the new Subaru’s best finish to-date in tenth, whilst fellow double champion Jason Plato completed a hat-trick of top twenty finishes.
The only hitch was a fire for James Cole that sidelined him for the majority of the weekend and a retirement in race three for Warren Scott, though the team was confident in the aftermath of Cole’s incident it understood the nature of the problem.
Thruxton throws up a number of unique challenges for the 32-strong field both in terms of tyre degradation, with a special compound of Dunlop Sport Maxx tyre being required to compete due to the abrasive track surface. Additionally the circuit’s fast corners such as ‘Church’ contrast with tighter, more intricate sections such as the ‘Complex’ of corners in sector one.
Turkington currently spearheads the team’s challenge in the Drivers championship, sitting 17th heading into the weekend having amassed a total of ten points thus far. He was pleased with the progress of the Levorg at Donington and underlined his confidence that BMR have the personnel in place to put the Subaru name up in lights before long.
“We walk away from Donington with a few more grey hairs, but with an abundance of information and a deeper understanding of the Subaru Levorg,” said the 2014 champion.
“Changeable conditions on Saturday provided a new set of challenges, but we coped remarkably well and my confidence with the car is growing all the time.
“It’s onwards and upwards from here and I’m already looking forward to getting back in the car at Thruxton. We know there is work to do to close the gap to the front runners, but we have the people, skills and experience to make that happen.”
Fellow team leader Plato concurred with Turkington’s feelings, and believes the lessons learnt in the East Midlands a fortnight ago [16th-17th April] are set to accelerate the team’s progress towards podium finishes long before the end of the current campaign.
“Donington proved to be very productive for Silverline Subaru BMR Racing,” explained Plato.
“We continue to gain valuable insight into the development of the team’s Subaru Levorg’s. We achieved a great deal this weekend, which will accelerate our performance on track in the coming weeks. We know the areas we need to improve upon and are working flat out to find solutions.
“I’m still confident that our target of challenging for podiums will arrive before mid-season.
“Everybody at Silverline Subaru BMR Racing is up for the challenge and is feeling a certain degree of inner calm that success is just around the corner.”
Despite an alarming fire bringing Cole’s weekend to an abrupt halt at Donington, he was also left with positive impressions of the team’s progress, which has been rapid as a result of the BMR engineers sending the four machines down different setup routes in every session thus far this season, thereby covering the ground four times as fast as some one-car independent outfits in the field.
“I came away from Donington with only positive thoughts about the future with Team BMR and the Subaru Levorg. Despite our little problem on Sunday we are starting to see the cars’ potential – this process just takes time,” he summarised.
“The general reliability of the cars is very good and the future looks impressive for all of the Silverline Subaru BMR Racing drivers.” pointed out Warren Scott, who also serves as team owner and principal.
“We look forward to improving on the issues found to get the cars closer to the front of the grid.”
Live text commentary of the Thruxton race weekend will be available via TouringCars.net