Honda Yuasa Racing drivers Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden are adamant that their new British Touring Car Championship challenger will allow them to compete at the sharp end of the grid in 2014.
Since Honda started their factory support of Team Dynamics in 2010, the outfit has secured both the manufacturers and teams championships every year, with Shedden and Neal themselves each winning a drivers’ title during that time.
However, despite the team’s recent success coming with a hatchback version of the Honda Civic, they have instead opted to race with the manufacturer’s new Tourer model in 2014 – the first time an ‘estate’ touring car has featured in the series since 1994, a move that was initially met with uncertainty among the public.
Neal admitted that while there were some issues in the initial stages of testing the Tourer, the mileage that the team have been able to rack up in the off-season has left them confident of continuing their success in the championship.
“As with any new car, testing with the Tourer was challenging to begin with, and I was initially surprised by how different it felt to the Civic hatchback,” said the three-times champion. “That said, we’ve learnt a huge amount every time we’ve gone out and have made a lot of progress, which is really positive. I’m confident we’ve turned a corner now and have rounded off a few of the sharp edges.
And for Shedden, starting with a new car is a challenge that the 2012 series champion is eagerly anticipating.
“The first thing to say is that the Civic Tourer looks mega – really awesome!” said the Scot, who missed out on a second title by seven points last year. “So much work has gone on over the winter to try to replicate the heartbeat of the Civic hatchback, which has obviously been such a potent weapon and the BTCC benchmark for the past couple of years. We ran the first Tourer back-to-back with the Civic hatchback, which was tremendously beneficial and provided us with some really interesting information.
Honda Yuasa Racing Team Manager Peter Crolla was similarly confident about the squad being able to shrug off the difficulties in bringing a new model into the championship.
“The Tourer is clearly a new engineering challenge, but as a manufacturer, Honda has always been prepared to go out there, try something different and really push the boat out,” said Crolla. “We’ve made huge progress from where we started with this car and now we’re starting to unlock its secrets – which is tremendously exciting for the year ahead.
“The Civic Tourer builds upon Honda’s sporting heritage and spearheads a new direction following two immensely successful seasons with the current Civic hatchback, but everything in racing evolves – you can’t stand still. The nature of motor sport as an engineering project is to always keep challenging yourself and pushing back the boundaries.
“The changes are obviously significant – both visually and from an engineering point-of-view – and whilst in some respects the Tourer is very similar to the hatchback variant, there are considerable differences aerodynamically and a greater distribution of the weight towards the rear. We had to compensate for that during the testing and development programme, but we like to think we’ve been innovative in the way we’ve engineered the back end.”