After a disappointing weekend at Croft, Dave Pinkney is chasing top ten finishes from today's three races at Oulton Park after a strong performance in qualifying for the latest rounds of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.

The A-Tech Alfa Romeo's were off the pace in North Yorkshire earlier in the month which led to much head scratching within the team, but a drastic improvement in performance saw Pinkney qualify his 156 in 13th place, less than a second and a half away from pole sitter Colin Turkington.

“Croft was a disaster really,” Pinkney reflected to Crash.net. “We had learned about the car heading to Croft and we made some changes there that didn't work so we left Croft pretty depressed. The car just wasn't working, but since then I had a brainstorm and woke up with a smile on my face thinking that, although we went backwards at Croft, it taught me something about the car.

“Its one of those things with testing where, although you have gone the wrong way, you can work out why that is and can make the changes needed to progress. I spent three hours with the lads and went through where we had gone wrong and it was a case of ‘wow, this is going to work'. It took the three week gap between races to put the car back to where it is now and we have made changes again here and every time it has gone quicker – and it will again on Sunday.”

With the car having been amongst the quickest through the speed traps at Oulton Park, Pinkney remains confident going into the three races – although he admits that he isn't getting carried away with his expectations for the remainder of the weekend.

“If you look at the speed traps, in second practice the car was quickest across the start finish straight and close to being the quickest in the other two speed traps,” he said. “I honestly feel, when we get the car dialed in, that it will be the quickest car here but it is fine tuning the thing to get that extra second.

“The race pace of the car is quick but we still need two or three days. Depending on the start, it would be nice to get into the top ten and be competitive. If you look at the last race at Croft, people were a second and a half slower than in qualifying but I don't think I'll be any slower. I believe I can run with the pack and, while we won't be up there, if we can rotate around tenth place setting similar lap times then I'll be happy.”

Source crash.net