In January, Adam Jones was ready to tell the world about his plans for the 2007 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship – and then things took a turn for the worse. In his first Crash.net column, he talks about how things came back on track.
You might remember that I spoke to
Crash.net back at the
Autosport show a few months back when I said that I was close to sorting my plans for the 2007 season. Well since then, it’s been a very rocky ride...
It’s pretty bizarre really, because we had been so far ahead – schedule wise – with sponsors and everything that we could possibly have announced something at the NEC, but then one thing led to another and - while we have had some highs - we’ve had a lot of lows. One minute it was on, then it was off, then it was one again. One minute we had the full budget and then we had hardly anything – it’s been just like a rollercoaster. To be honest with you, I can’t really describe it and tell you how stressful it’s been.
Les Latham, my manager, will probably tell you I’ve had it easy but as driver I think you feel that stress more than anything. The work that has gone in from all involved to get us on the grid has been amazing, from the smaller sponsors who we have on the side of the car to title sponsors Air Cool Engineering – without a shadow of a doubt I would not be standing talking to you now without the help of Dave Clews at Air Cool and we wouldn’t be competing in the championship, its as simple as that. We are finally here, it’s been very rushed but now we have most of the hard work done and out of the way, we can hand the car to Paul Ridgeway at GR Asia to get it ready to rock and roll.
We’d had this plan in the pipeline as well as other plans with other teams for the 2007 season, but I think this was always going to be the best package for us with what we wanted to do and what we wanted to achieve this year. Then it all went a bit ‘tits up’ and as I’ve described it to people, I feel like I’ve had a right kick in the bollocks over the winter!
