Tempus insists more to come

Tempus Sport team boss Richard Coleman insists there is plenty more to come from his new outfit following its first outing in the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch.

Harry Vaulkhard brought home a brace of points finishes from the three races to take home five points, which more than doubles his tally of two from the entire 2008 campaign.

Having qualified in eleventh place, Vaulkhard took the flag in eighth place in race one and then battled with the similar Chevrolet Lacetti of Jason Plato in race two before matching his qualifying position with eleventh in race two.

Despite contact early on leaving his car with slight damage, Vaulkhard secured more points with a solid ninth in the final race of the weekend and he said he was pleased with how his first weekend with the team had panned out.

"It's all gone pretty well and I've scored more than double the points in my first race weekend this year that I did in all of last season," he said. "If anything, I was driving quite within myself as I wanted to get some solid points scoring results on the board rather than risk it and not finish a race. It's pretty difficult to pass at Brands and I did get stuck behind Dan Eaves a couple of times, and he can drive a pretty wide car when he needs to.

"It was great to show we had the pace of Plato in pretty much exactly the same car. It was satisfying to pass him in the second race, but not so good to see him go back past! Race three was frustrating as someone decided to use me as a barrier, but that's what happens when certain people can't drive cleanly. I'm now looking forwards to Thruxton and getting more points on the board."

Team boss Coleman was also happy with his team's debut weekend although he insisted there was plenty more still to come.

"It was great to participate in our first BTCC race meeting as a new team and I'm happy that we've established a good baseline to progress for the season ahead, although we're certainly not opening the champagne yet," he said. "The Lacetti definitely had scope for good top ten performances this weekend and Harry was unfortunate with traffic but drove solidly, despite making a mistake in the second race.

"Of course, there are plenty of areas where we can improve and we will capitalise on all the lessons learnt here when we are next out in action at Thruxton."