Potential Shows Through Frustration For Team Aon
The new three car line up at Team Aon enjoyed a weekend at Croft that the drivers, Tom Chilton, Tom Onslow-Cole and Andy Neate felt showed them the potential in the car, despite suffering some frustrations at the same time.
With the calendar now entering a seven week mid season break, all three believe that the development programme on their two-litre turbo Global Focus will now kick up a gear with the chance to work on further developments for the car.
Tom Chilton enjoyed three top ten finishes at Croft, and feels that the rapid pace at which the car is being developed has given the team plenty to think about entering the break.
“We had a lot of new parts on the car at Croft but we were scuppered by the good old British weather,” explained Chilton. “We have three drivers and with time on a dry track, we would have been able to work through a testing programme over the course of this weekend to find out what works and what doesn’t. Because it rained, we were on the back foot. By losing so much track time, we were feeling our way with the handling at Croft and we made a couple of radical choices in terms of set-up that didn’t go our way. We have more work planned on the car and we will come back stronger from this.”
Andy Neate struggled in the wet conditions in qualifying, so he reverted to a known set up on the car for the races on Sunday. A puncture in race one and a crash in race three sandwiched a decent 9th place finish for Neate in the second race. He too feels positive about the progress that has been made with the Focus.
“I was confident that the previous set-up would allow me to push, and I was right,” he said. “Race two was fantastic and I went from 20th to ninth at the finish so it shows that we can get pace from the Ford Focus. With the progress everyone is pushing to make with the car, I am confident ahead of the second half of the year.”
The return of Tom Onslow-Cole was slightly tainted by the news he would be hampered by 45kg of ballast due to being a new entry into the championship. This meant he struggled to match the pace of the other two cars but like Chilton he was working with some experimental upgrades to the car.
He said; “It has been a real baptism of fire. I was getting familiar with the car in difficult conditions and we were trying some new things in terms of the set-up too. I think we probably went the wrong way with my car in terms of generating grip from the set-up, but we can even take a positive from that because now we know what doesn’t work. There is definitely more time to come from me too when I get used to the new Focus.”
Team Principal Mike Earle believes that the break will be crucial to the team in allowing them to unlock some of the handling potential of the new Global Focus.
Richard Devine
