Lewis Kent is optimistic ahead of the pair of races at Castle Combe for rounds seven and eight of TCR UK today [15 July], and feels there is more time to be gained in his Hyundai i30 N.
The Kent & Essex Motorsport racer treated warm-up and practice yesterday as shakedown sessions after a problem with the wheel bolt on the front-left tyre in Friday pre-event testing, when a bolt sheared off.
He told TouringCars.Net it meant the first time he pushed the car was in the second half of qualifying yesterday, but was happy with fifth on the grid for race one.
“The position is good for us,” said Kent. “We’ve got the inside line for the first couple of corners. Obviously it’s the dirty line but hopefully we can get a good launch and get near the front, the VWs look quick so if we can latch onto the back of one of them and push through.
“But yeah we’re in a really good position. We only got to the second half of qualifying when we truly started pushing the car so we didn’t really push it a lot until the end of the day.
“We’ve still got a little bit of time left in the car so let’s just see what we can do today.”
Kent will start seventh for the reverse-grid contest, and is hoping to be running at the sharp end, although he admits making up ground at the Wiltshire circuit may prove challenging.
“It is a tricky track to overtake at,” said Kent. “It’s got a couple of long straights but at the same time it’s not the widest of tracks so it is going to be hard with these big wide cars. But we’ll give it a go and try to get past as much as we can.
“Hopefully we can get a podium- top four top five – as long as we’re up there at the front we’re happy but we’re down on a little bit of pace towards the other cars but not much.
“If we can just go continuously hopefully we can catch them and get out in front.”