Four teams complete Dunlop tyre and RML parts test at Donington Park

Despite the curtain drawing on the 2015 less than two weeks ago, the road to 2016 began at Donington Park today as four teams carried out testing on the Dunlop soft tyre and RML Group shared components.

Honda Yuasa Racing, Team BMR, Power Maxed Racing and West Surrey Racing all descended on the 1.9 mile National layout to assist with preparations for next season. Once again next year will see a differing compound for the soft tyre be implemented, with today’s session the final chance to gain valuable data before a decision is made.

Believed to be down to three choices, a trio of drivers in differing car configurations tested the mixture of compounds. On behalf of front-wheel-drive machinery, Honda Yuasa Racing’s Matt Neal and Team BMR’s Colin Turkington clocked significant mileage whilst Sam Tordoff provided rear-wheel-drive feedback in two West Surrey Racing BMW 1-Series’.

Dunlop are now set to analyse the data amassed from today’s test before making a final decision on a compound for next season.

After debuting new uprights and power steering on-board his Chevrolet Cruze at Brands Hatch earlier this month, Power Maxed Racing’s Josh Cook became the first driver to run the full updated system of stock components after renowned engineering company RML Group were awarded the TOCA Technical contract.

Completing more than 50 laps during the day, the newly crowned Jack Sears Trophy champion also had the teams second car on site, believed to be carrying the standard GPRM checklist.

“We’ve had to do a lot of installation,” commented Cook to btcc.net at the end of the day’s running. “Obviously it’s the first time the new front and rear subframes have been run in conjunction with the steering components I ran at Brands Hatch, but we’ve already learned quite a bit. Today it’s been about bedding everything in and ironing out any little issues.

“Overall it feels like a really good foundation and it’s definitely an improvement over what we had previously. The general feeling and feedback from the car is good and has given us some better baseline performance over our last test here. We had both cars here so we could run the two systems back to back, and I’m really happy with the package RML and TOCA have put together.”

This first outing was the start of an extensive programme of testing to ensure that the new package meets all the requirements of the BTCC and the first full kits are on target for their delivery dates in early November. It is yet to be confirmed what teams have put down orders for the kits currently.