Motorbase Performance are ‘ready to go’ for this weekend’s British Touring Car Championship meeting at Oulton Park, after the team repaired two heavily damaged cars following the previous round at Thruxton.
Both Martin Depper and Luke Davenport collected big accident damage in the last two races, with Depper’s race two shunt causing the second red flag in the day’s second race.
Such was the damage to Depper’s car that he failed to take the start of race three, whilst Davenport retired from the final race due to a collision with another car.
It left the Kent-based team with a big repair job to complete in the two weeks between the events, but Team Manager Oly Collins says the team have also been able to make additional improvements to the trio of Ford Focus cars.
“Oulton Park is an outstanding venue, and one that throws up a number of different challenges for our drivers and engineers,” said Collins.
“The entire Motorbase crew have worked extremely hard during the short two week turnaround to ensure that the two cars that unfortunately suffered significant damage at Thruxton are ready to go this weekend.
“We’ve also made some further improvements in readiness for Oulton Park and we’ll keep pushing to ensure that we’re at the top of our game. The BTCC is arguably the most competitive it’s ever been this year and by its very nature is never stands still – which means we can’t afford to either!”
For Depper, he is keen to see this weekend’s event allow him to break a run of point-less finishes, as he has only cracked the top 15 once this season, which came in the very first race of the year.
“I’m hoping that we can come out of the box where we want to start in FP1 this weekend and fine tune the car to work well from there,” said Depper. “I don’t think we’re far away, we just need to break the run of bad luck that we’ve had so far.”
Davenport has yet to break into the points in his maiden season, but the 23-year-old believes he has already shown signs of his potential in the nine races so far.
“We need to keep moving forward this weekend,” added Davenport. “I know that it’s a tough rookie season to come into the championship but hopefully people are now starting to see flashes of my competitiveness.
“My aim is to hit the points finishes this weekend, all of my focus is going to be on trying to run closer to the front and to show people what I can do.”