Rockingham test goes well for West Thurrock Tour Car team (From Thurrock Gazette)

British Tour scrap for borough's AmDTuning.com team

10:28am Wednesday 26th September 2012 in Sport

MOTORSPORT: WEST Thurrock based AmDTuning.com came back from a difficult start at Rockingham to secure its best results of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car championship season.

The team was making a return to the series with its turbo-powered Volkswagen Golf having elected to miss the previous event at Knockhill to carry out development work at Snetterton.

Saturday’s qualifying session saw driver Ollie Jackson qualify in 17th place but his opening race was ruined on the first lap when a loose boost pipe forced him to pit. Rain arrived at the Northamptonshire circuit before the start of race two, with Ollie lining up at the back of the field after his earlier issues. He fought through to a top ten position by lap eight, and he held this position to the finish. He was rewarded with a front-row slot for race three when the reverse grid draw was carried out.

A hectic start saw Ollie shuffled back to 11th place but when the race calmed down, he soon started to make progress back up the order, passing the Ford Focus of Mat Jackson to go tenth. Driving impressively and setting strong lap times, Ollie would make up further positions to again finish eighth; giving him his biggest score from a BTCC weekend so far.

As a result, he is now 18th in the overall championship standings and 14th amongst the Independents.

AmDTuning.com boss Shaun Hollamby was also pleased with the results on track, which came on the weekend when the team welcomed a number of new team members onboard.

“From the back of the field to eighth in race two was an impressive performance, especially when the places were earned on merit and not inherited because of others going off track.

“As a team we have worked well and found a really good set-up that Ollie was able to make the most of. We’ve got some ideas from this weekend that we want to look at for Silverstone and hopefully we can have another strong run there.”

For more motorsport see Friday's THURROCK GAZETTE