BTC Racing’s Josh Cook says the opening round of the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch will be a “learning weekend” due to a lack of running caused by an electrical gremlin.
Cook was seventh in opening practice despite an intermittent electrical issue, but changes made for the second session failed to work, forcing him to sit out the majority of it after completing just 11 laps.
He told TouringCars.Net that although the issue has affected his track time so far this weekend, the problem should be solved in time for qualifying.
“We’ve been chasing a little bit of an electrical gremlin since the first session, so we changed a few bits during FP1, then in FP2 we made a couple of changes but we weren’t getting anywhere,” explained Cook.
“So we opted to sit out the rest of the session and make sure the car is all sorted for qualifying, which is not ideal for time in the car but the guys are working on it and doing a great job so it should be sorted for qualifying.”
Despite the issue, Cook was encouraged by the positive pace shown by the FK8 Honda Civic Type R, and credited the engineering of Team Dynamics and the build by BTC Racing.
“We’re pretty pleased to have been putting the lap times that we were putting in earlier considering we’ve only had limited running in the car.
“That’s credit to [Team] Dynamics who have obviously engineered a very good car, and BTC who have obviously put it together very well and set it up very well in the short period of time that we’ve had.
“So credit to them I’m looking forward to getting out in qualifying but I think it’s just going to be a learning weekend for us really.”
Although he was encouraged by the pace so far, Cook admitted he would have liked more track time before the opening round, with the build of the car impeding testing time during the off-season.
“We did a shakedown here which was a bit of an extensive shakedown and then we came here for the media day test and we’ve not been out other than that,” said Cook.
“Putting these cars together takes quite a long time and there just wasn’t the opportunity to get out before then. So the guys have done a great job with putting them all together.
“But you always want more running in the car to learn as much as you can, and this car handles and acts very differently to any other touring car I’ve ever driven, so I have to work out what all the changes do, they certainly don’t have the same effect as what they have done previously.
“So like I said this weekend is going to be about getting as many points as I can, and learning as much as I can.”