News: BTCC 2006, 24th September

Two top-ten results for Pinkney in BTCC's biggest field for a decade

Dave Pinkney gave Motorbase Performance two highly-respectable top-ten finishes in the penultimate Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship event at Brands Hatch, Kent, at the weekend.

Highly respectable because it was the BTCC's biggest field in more than a decade, with 24 cars taking to the grid. And, on a short circuit like the 1.2-mile Indy configuration at Brands where overtaking is notoriously difficult, that number of cars made it hard work to get any kind of decent result.

The qualifying session highlighted the strength in depth of the competition Pinkney faced, with the top 15 cars separated by only one second.

After starting 14 th for the first of Sunday's three races, Round 25 of the championship, Pinkney scrapped his way to ninth in his Honda Integra, a position he felt could have been bettered had he not been held up for several laps by James Kaye in a similarly-powered Honda Civic Type R.

As it was, he had to muscle his way past Kaye to make progress – an incident that Pinkney thought hindered him in Round 26, where he maintained his ninth place.

Pinkney said: "I did accidentally hit James as I got past. I thought that had damaged the steering as the car started to understeer after about half distance. But that turned out to be a problem with the car's set-up as it happened again without hitting anything at the same point in the next race."

"Had I not had the altercation with James, I'd have picked up the understeer anyway and known it was something to do with the set-up and could have sorted it for the second race. Once that was sorted the car would have been fantastic and I reckon I'd have definitely got on the podium in the third race."

Unfortunately, Pinkney didn't get a chance to fight for higher honours in Round 27. He was the innocent victim in another driver's "off" which resulted in the Safety Car being deployed after the first corner of the first lap and Pinkney (unhurt in the incident) retiring.

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