Matt Neal leaves Brands Hatch with five point lead

Matt Neal enjoyed a solid run of points at Brands Hatch and leaves the season opener with a five point lead over team-mate Gordon Shedden in the Drivers’ championship.

The three-time BTCC champion finished third behind Tom Ingram and Shedden, before following his team-mate home for a 1-2 in the second race. Despite carrying 66kgs of weight and the soft tyre in race three, Neal was able to finish fifth, only just being beaten at the line by Motorbase Performance’s Andrew Jordan.

“I was just keeping quiet,” Neal told TouringCarTimes. “I was just getting on with it and enjoying it. Shame for Flash in the last one but other than that we’ve had a good weekend. We were lucky with Rob and Tom in Race 2, whether we could’ve had them was under question, we were carrying weight you’ve gotta roll the dice and have some go your way. I was more pleased with race three than race two, I was having to run with heigh weight, soft tyre, to finish fifth was great. I was pulling more revs at the end of the straight, how does that work?”

Despite the strong performances of the Hondas, Neal said there is still a lot of work to do before the cars can reach their full potential.

“We’ve got a few wrinkles to iron out, once we get the ironed out we’ll be good but they’re pretty major things at the minute,” he said. “It’s not a plain sailing ship. We’ve got a lot of work to do before Donington. Some people have a lot to do i.e. Subaru and co, other people have got pretty sorted packages but we’ve got a lot to do yet.”

Looking ahead to Donington Park, a circuit Neal holds dear, he knows that leading the championship puts him in a tough place come qualifying owing to having to carry 75kg of success ballast.

“It’s where I first went to watch Touring Cars,” he said. “It’s where I won my first won a race, the closest one to me, it holds a lot of memories for me but it’s going to be tough carrying weight in qualifying to get in the top ten, it’ll be a busy weekend.”