After a surprisingly good outing at Knockhill, despite yet more bad luck after clawing our way up to 8th spot only to be spun out by someone, it was a great learning weekend for the team. We have found some developments in the suspension which have rectified an issue we have had all season. We didn't think our car would be well suited to the twisty nature of Knockhill however our qualifying and race paces were great, in race 3 we were actually lapping faster than the guy's in 2nd and 3rd and we had a tracking issue.

Off to Knockhill this weekend, The Scottish circuit has a lot of fond memories for me as it was the track where I had my first ever race in a Sierra Cosworth! Also last season I secured pole position, a race win, & fastest lap. Unfortunately I feel we may struggle in the Chevrolet coming out of the hairpin as we seem to have a lot less torque and low down power than the cars were competing against, so for me I'm hoping for rain as that's usually a bit of a leveler for us. Non the less I'm sure our car will go well on the rest of the circuit!

I'm currently getting ready for Oulton which will hopefully offer us as a team some better luck than we have been having of late. Historically Oulton has been a bit of a bogey circuit for me luck wise. I love the track but it just doesn't seem to like me too much! Once again we will be pushing for top ten results which we have shown we have the speed to achieve.

After a problem in qualifying we had to start way further down the order than we had hoped. Race 1 saw us make up 3-4 places the race 2 was going well after getting into 8th position I was involved in a collision which later resulted in me having a blow out. Race 3 was just as frustrating after lying in 10th position we had another blow out. Yet again we were unfortunate to miss out on multiple top ten results. Hopefully we will have some good luck at Oulton.

As you probably know it is important to stay physically & mentally fit to race in the BTCC, it's difficult to maintain your fitness when you have a long break such as the 6 weeks we've just had since Croft. I had 3 weeks of relaxing and unwinding then the last two weeks & next week have been surfing training and running almost every-single day. It's so important to keep your concentration as a lack of fitness means you make more mistakes.

However as we had previous Data from snett we went pretty well, setting times on the first day to see us in 3rd overall and leading the independent class ahead of several works drivers. As the day progressed we dropped to 3rd independent & 8th overall, which was a pretty big achievement for us!

We have just returned from a two day test at Snetterton, which is one of the few venues our budget allowed us to test at pre-season. So far this year we have been somewhat on the back foot to other teams as our cars have never run on the UK circuits before unlike the rest of the field. So every time we turn up to a track we have two fifty minute tests to work out gear ratios, and all of the detailed suspension & chassis set-ups required to set a good qualifying time, while the other teams are ‘sharpening a razor blade’.

I was happy with the Qualy, to run P2 in the damp shows we have got the pace if we can get the car sorted for the dry too. We’re also carrying ballast, which is a touch unfair in my opinion as we’re already struggling for straight-line speed especially to the BTC spec cars. We have found a development in the car this weekend which should help us at Donnington & our excess ballast shouldn’t be so much of a hindrance at Donnington as there’s less starting and stopping.

My first weekend in the BTCC was always going to be tough, I have trained so hard for it over the winter & there have been very few hours where I haven’t been looking forward to getting out there on the grid to see what I can do. I struggled in qualifying due to changing weather conditions & mistimed my lap as the red flags came out in the middle of it!

We had our first run out with the Chevrolet Lacetti S2000 on Thursday @ Donnington park. The engine hadn't been started in the UK until the morning of our first shakedown. We approached the day with the aim of shaking the car down on it's first outing on a UK circuit. The day started very well, and streight away it was clear the car was quick and we had a pretty good baseline set-up on the Dunlop Tyres. As the day progressed we got faster & faster as I learned the car and we dialed out teething problems, such as a faulty fuel pump & my seating position.