This off season, the Handy Motorsport Toyota Avensis has visited Brands Hatch, Snetterton, Oulton Park, Donington Park and Rockingham.
An early-season issue with the Toyota’s setup last year, whereby the team followed a philosophy that did not transpire to suit Rob Austin, was rectified mid-season.
A podium at the Brands Hatch finale weekend rounded the year off on a high.
At the Donington Park Season Launch test session, the outfit underlined its potential heading into the 2017 campaign, with Austin notching the second fastest time on the day – just 0.1s shy of the benchmark.
“Donington was a good indicator, but it’s by no means the full picture,” said Austin.
“We were confident we had good pace in the car and the test proved it, but I know there’s no way all of the works Hondas, Subarus and BMWs will be outside the top ten come Brands, as they were at Season Launch.
“Our plan was to just go about our test programme as though nobody was watching and at the end of the day see how we stacked up.
“To be P2 was a pleasant surprise considering I had made such a mess of our new tyre run that we had actually set our fastest time of the day on old tyres, so there was plenty left on the table.”
A largely unbroken four-hour block of testing, gave Handy Motorsport the opportunity to undertake a lot of mileage where race set-up was the paramount consideration.
‘Extremely competitive’
Team principal Simon Belcher added: “We ran the hard tyres mostly, did a lot of laps on those and only did one new tyre run, so to be P2 we’re happy with that.
“We focused on a lot of longer runs and everything is looking really good ahead of Brands, it’s confirmed what we thought during the pre-season.
“Overall for the day we’re really happy and very excited ahead of the first round.”
With the 2017 campaign less than a fortnight away, Austin is confident his Toyota Avensis has the capability to qualify and more importantly, mount a challenge this season.
“I’ll try to qualify on pole, of course, but this is an extremely competitive year and cannot be underestimated, so realistically I will be happy as long as we can qualify in the top ten,” he commented.
“We’ve developed an extremely strong race car and I believe that if we can start in the top 10 on Saturday then we will be set for a very exciting Sunday.”
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