In his latest column for Crash.net, Martyn Bell looks back over the fifth round of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Croft, and a solid weekend for the Geoff Steel Racing team.
I think the confidence we have with the car after Croft isn’t reflected in the results we achieved. We are oozing with confidence because the car is coming to us. The rest of the field isn’t clearing off and if you look at the lap-times, there was a seven second gap at Mondello and four seconds difference somewhere else and now there is a two second difference in what we are doing compared to them when the car is settled down.
I feel we are making massive steps forwards and as far as the Independents go, we can see them – they aren’t all clearing off! I’m racing with the minnows at the back, but we are making big progress. The confidence thing is the bit that people won’t understand, but for four rounds I’ve been frightened to squeeze the throttle in case the car threw me off, but it’s changed now.
Looking at the weekend, I have to say that I was further back than I expected to be in qualifying. The car was feeling really good and was fast from Tower right through the back of the circuit, but I was losing all my time in the complex up to the hairpin. Ironically, the fastest sector time I did there was on my out lap, so I think it was a case of me trying to overdrive it in that corner. We downloaded the telemetry and I was losing so much time around there that I had to sit and watch the Porsche race to see how the drivers approached it and also went for a walk on Saturday night with Geoff to get my head round it.
