Team Dynamics expecting strong season

Team Dynamics are looking forward to a good 2010, now official competing as one of two manufacturer teams in the championship, with Gordon Shedden setting the second fastest times in the upgraded Honda Civic in both of today’s test sessions.

Steve Neal spoke to TouringCarTimes about their chances of returning to the front this year:

“We hope so yes, there’s a lot of contingency factors have come in this year, with a works team from Chevrolet, bringing in their World Touring cars with all the waivers and dispensations that go with them – and the gas cars that’s a totally unknown situation really with such a big change to regulations for motor racing worldwide with cars running around with pressurised cylinders on board – I though that was specifically banned, should be anyway.

And of course we’ve got the new touring car engines as well – with all the turbos up there, and gasoline, and mixed fuels – you really don’t know”.

What are the improvements to the car?

“Many really – we’ve made new subframes fronts, beam axle for the rear so we’ve got completely revised suspension geometry on the car – we’ve got different aero on the car, we’ve managed to get the cD’s down by 10% and we’ve doubled the amount of downforce, as we’ve got flat floors now all the way through, that’s the equivilent to what they’ve been running in Europe – so there’s a whole multitude of things.”

“We haven’t got the revised engine yet with the new top end, we’ve got one or two revisions on it but not the ultimate yet – on this car (Matt Neal’s) we’ve got new front struts, that car at the moment is on last years, so we’re trying a back to back comparison”.

Last year was a bit of quiet year for Team Dynamics, this year with Honda on board and a strong driver line-up, is the championship the goal?

“What they did at the end of last year, to try and compensate they realised that allowing the World Touring Cars into the British Touring Car championship allowed them in with all of their FIA waivers, and the waivers were put in place by the FIA and not by the World Touring Car Championship, now if they’d been put in by the World Touring Car Championship, they wouldn’t have been allowed to carry them over – but because they were FIA waivers, they were”.

“Instead of banning them, and bringing them back to our level, which is what they should have done, they imposed upon all the teams who build their own cars the enormous cost of bringing our cars up to that spec, so it’s probably cost us £150,000 – £200,000 to upgrade our cars, with all the R&D that goes with it – and we’re still not fully up to what they’re up to – so I think the whole thing’s out of control quite honestly.”

“If Jimmy Thompson had this car last year it would have been a good race winner, I’m convinced of that, and now with Matt, hopefully it’s going to do the same – and Gordon’s extremely fast and if his race craft’s improved a little bit, he’ll win a lot of races”.