Experience Vs Newcomers in the SEAT Cupra
Opener
20 March 2008
A tantalising mix of
experienced Leon Cupra racers like Carl Breeze, Daniel Welch and Freddy
Nordstrom and rapid newcomers such as Martin Byford, Robert Lawson
and Andrew Herron, makes this year’s SEAT Cupra Championship
one of the most open ever. Together with a prize fund in excess of £250,000
and a Champion’s title-winning prize drive of a fully funded
race weekend with SEAT Sport UK, the opening two rounds at Brands Hatch
on Sunday 30th March are eagerly anticipated.
Winter testing has been
intensive, with new team and driver combinations doing more pre-season
miles than ever before. Byford, the 2007 Clio Champion, has been ultra
quick in his Z Speed Racing Leon, unofficially breaking thelap record
at Brands Hatch in February. Not to be out done, Herron bounced back
from a 115mph testing accident at Donington Park to also get under
the Brands Hatch lap record in March. If testing times are a guide
to the season ahead, Herron and his JHR Developments stable-mate Robert
Lawson, who finished 9th and 3rd respectively in last year’s
Clio Cup, also look set to be a team that will be series front runners.
Meanwhile
Breeze, Welch and Nordstrom will be hoping that their experience in
the SEAT Cupra Championship will give them an early edge. Breeze won
three races and finished 3rd last year, while Welch finished 5th in
last season’s SEAT Cupra Championship, with wins at both final
races at Thruxton. They will be joined in a three car Welch Motorsport
team by former Formula Vauxhall Junior Championship pilot Jeremy Gumbley,
who returns to motorsport after an 11 year break.
Nordstrom finished
4th in the Cupra R Class last year, after three wins and finishing
half his races on the podium. The 19-year old former Mini S Class Champion
has a brand new PlumberTraining.com backed Leon Cupra for 2008, and
will no-doubt be chasing race wins and podiums again.
Others to look
out for include former kart champion and Radical racer Daniel Rowbottom,
who achieved pole positions and race wins last year in cars that he
had never driven before. Dan Stringfellow joins the Championship this
year, having finished 4th overall and 2nd in class in his first season
of saloon car racing in last year’s Kumho BMW Championship. James
Appleby, the son of acclaimed international rally driver Dave Appleby,
also joins the series. James only passed his ARDS test in February
and has been impressive in testing his Hardinge Machine Tools backed
Leon Cupra. David Nye, who finished 5th in the Ford Fiesta Championship
last year, will also be worth watching, as he’s already set fast
times in pre-season testing and is being run by the vastly experienced
Daniels Motorsport team.
Martin Byford: “Pre-season testing has
gone very well; at some circuits we’ve been as quick as we’d
expected to be and at others we’ve exceeded our expectations.
We’ve done our homework, now it’s time to hand it in and
see if we can get an A grade! Testing is one thing, but we don’t
know what the others have been doing and there are some experienced
Cupra racers on the grid and some fast guys I’ve raced against
before in Clios, so we’re not underestimating the opposition.
We’ve just prepared our Leon Cupra the best we can and we’re
going to Brands Hatch to drive the wheels off it.”
Carl Breeze: “We’ve
had two good pre-season tests, one at Brands Hatch and the other at
Rockingham, where we concentrated on race set-up and how to get the
best out of the tyres – and everything has gone very well. I’ve
gelled well with my new team and Daniel [Welch] and I work well together;
it’s good to have a quick team-mate in terms of data sharing
and we speak the same language as regards what we want out of the car.
It’s important for me to start the season well, and qualifying
at Brands Hatch will be very important as overtaking opportunities
are few and far between. Last year we won the first race and started
the second from pole, so I’ll be looking to do something similar
at Brands Hatch this time, and then try and maintain that pace in the
early race meetings and be the one that other drivers have to chase.”
Daniel
Rowbottom: “We’ve only done one pre-season test at Oulton
Park, and whilst we only ran the car for twenty laps or so, what we
learnt was very valuable. I felt comfortable in the Leon Cupra, and
as Freddy Nordstrom was there testing the same day, we had another
SEAT driver on track to compare ourselves against. Brands Hatch will
be a big learning curve for us, both because the car is new and I’ve
only raced there before in sportscars, never in asaloon, but equally
we are quietly confident that we’ll be able to do a good job
and start the season well.”
The 2008 SEAT Cupra Championship gets
underway on the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit on Friday 28th March.
SEAT
See series calendar for SEAT
Cupra Championship 2008
Related Story 01.11.2007 - Cupra class of 2007 test the SEAT Sport UK BTCC Leon
