John Cleland proud of team after race against time
John Cleland has praised his team for the work done to get his car out for the opening race of the Super Touring season, but it ended with disappointment as the Vauxhall retired with a brake issue.
The two-time BTCC champion placed his car on third in the wet conditions of the race, but spent much of the afternoon working against time to fix a power steering issue that came to light at the end of the twenty minute session.
Cleland had his son Nicky working on the car non-stop leading up to the race, with other members of the Super Touring paddock chipping in to help while the other member of the Cleland team, Jamie, who was working for Motorbase Performance’s British GT at Rockingham, raced back to give an extra pair of hands to the effort.
“The two of them did a great job along with Julian from Simpson Motorsport, who looks after Keith Butcher’s Audi,” Cleland told TouringCarTimes. “I borrowed a pump from Dave Jarman and Julian and Nicky started it, and then Jamie got himself across from Rockingham to finish it off.”
The trio got the car out in time for the race, however a brake issue hampered the Scot’s progress, eventually resulting in a puncture and an early exit from the opening encounter of the year.
“The problem was we had was the back of the car was locking up horrendously to the point where it punctured a hole through the tyre, just a super flat spot,” he explained. “For some reason we’ve always had great brakes on that car and I don’t know what happened and I don’t know why but all of a sudden today it’s locking up. Maybe I didn’t get the balance right, I don’t know, I kept fiddling with it in the car.
I couldn’t remember how many laps we’d done and because of the sunlight I couldn’t see the pit board so I had no idea how many laps we had to go, and I thought if I creep around one more lap and stay in front I can maybe get fifth place. When I came round there was no chequered flag so that ended that.”
Cleland will now start the second race of the weekend from 15th, following the retirements of other drivers earlier in the race.
