Dunlop think soft tyre will be fastest over race distance

Dunlop are predicting their soft tyre will be faster over a race distance than the hard compound at Donington Park today.

The teams have had next to no running on the tyres in warmer temperatures, with both the Donington test and the first race meeting at Brands Hatch held in bitterly cold conditions.

But today should give more representative feedback, with track temperatures already approaching 20 degrees.

Dunlop’s James Bailey told TouringCarTimes: “Today at Donington the temperatures are closer to what we expect for this tyre. But going back to Brands Hatch we were also pleasantly surprised.

“We predicted the tyre would be faster for three or four laps and the standard tyre would become faster for the race, and that’s what happened in race one with Rob Austin sprinting away at the start.

“But when you look at race three, Gordon Shedden was on the soft tyre, and he was still able to come through the field and set faster laps at the end.

“Today in these temperatures, our expectation is the soft tyre will actually be the quickest tyre for the race distance, not just for a few laps.”

Bailey said the response to the soft tyre concept had generally been very good.

He said: “People were nervous beforehand and because of the winter weather, we didn’t get time to do a lot of testing – in fact, very little at all. But it went very well in the race.

“The feedback we’ve had, more importantly, from the fans, is that they like it. It mixes up the grid a bit.

“If you look at Rob Austin’s first race, when he was able to lead, but they held on enough for him to finish third – that was probably a better result than if he had started on the hard tyre.

“Likewise, those who used the hard tyre early got a strong race towards the end, like Adam Morgan, who was able to run in the top three for the whole race.

“And that’s what we want. If the BTCC didn’t have unpredictable results, then you would have the 20 or 30,000 people coming through the gates.”