Dan Cammish says a combination of factors contributed to a difficult British Touring Car Championship qualifying session for Team Dynamics at Croft today [23rd June].
The Honda Civic Type R FK8 pairing of Cammish and team-mate Matt Neal managed just 20th and 15th respectively, a second adrift of pole-sitter Ash Sutton’s Subaru Levorg GT.
The 2.1 mile Yorkshire circuit is notoriously strong for rear-wheel drive cars – most notably the Subaru Levorg and BMW 1-series.
Cammish also indicated the learning process at each circuit in his rookie season in the UK’s headline tin-top category is a contributing element.
“I don’t think anything went particularly wrong, we’re just lacking speed,” he told TouringCars.net.
“This is very much similar to Oulton Park, where Saturday morning is the first time I drive the circuit in a touring car, so I’ve got to become a front-wheel drive expert in an hour and a half, and that’s not easy.
“Of course [it’s part of the situation]. I was a tenth and a half off Matt [Neal] at Oulton and it’s the same here. It’s hard to cram in that amount of information that quickly.
“I do the best job I can, but at the end of the day, it’s tough to re-work your brain. So there’s a little bit of time in me, and then if you look at the time sheet at where the Civic Type Rs are – they’re all struggling.
“So it’s not just us. There’s definitely some time to be had, I got about as much out of it as I could in qualifying, maybe I could have been where Matt is in P15, but not much better than that.
“But right now, we don’t have that kind of performance, but we’re going to put our heads together and work it out.”
Cammish also says tomorrow is, in effect, a test session of sorts as the team further their understanding of the new-for-2018 model, with a focus on striking back in the second half of the season.
However, he is also keeping his sights focused on a potential result in the partially-reversed third race.
“I’ve just got to pick up points, but it’s always difficult in this championship to do that. I’ve got to try and work my way towards the top twelve for race three and hope I get ‘my day’,” he explained.
“We’ve just got to put our heads together and try some stuff – tomorrow is a bit of a learning day, a bit of a test session, and heading to Snetterton we need to do more testing and hopefully we can bounce back in the second half of the season.”
The opening race of the weekend starts at 12:05 BST tomorrow [24th June].