By Sophie Morris
Photography by Gus Gregory
For every weekend that Honda Yuasa Racing is due out on the track, Team Dynamics’ chief truckie and logistics manager, Mark Porter, loads well over 50 wheels onto the team’s truck – three sets each for Matt Neal and Gordon ‘Flash’ Shedden’s cars, plus six sets of wets, plus spares.
It’s a big job, yet just a small part of the incredible expenditure of effort and expertise that goes into readying the Honda Yuasa team for a new BTCC season – which this year opens at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit on the weekend of 29-30 March.
‘Even though the season lasts six months, the work doesn’t stop there,’ explains Barry Plowman, the team’s technical director. And Barry has an additional challenge this year; with his designers and technicians he’s working on a brand new car, the Civic Tourer, which had its first taste of tarmac at the end of January at Rockingham. It’s been 20 years since an estate car braved the BTCC track.
The Civic Tourer vs the Civic Hatchback
The Civic Tourer that the team has been working on since October 2013 sits below Barry’s office at Team Dynamics HQ, in a quiet industrial estate in the Worcestershire market town of Pershore. It’s side by side with its predecessor, the Civic Hatchback, which helped secure the top podium spot for Honda last year.
Until the season begins, Honda Yuasa Racing’s 2013 and 2014 cars will be put through back-to-back tests to ensure the Tourer is fully ready, while a second Civic Tourer is under construction in the next room.
Technical director Barry Plowman with his 2013 (right) and 2014 cars
Far from being nervous about the prospect of running an estate car round the track, the atmosphere throughout Team Dynamics is quietly confident. ‘The Civic Tourer has small advantages,’ says Barry. ‘It’s heavier than the hatchback by about 30kg, but we’ve taken the weight out of it, and it’s actually slightly more aerodynamic. It did four days at Rockingham and it was wet and the track temperature was two degrees – twenty is optimal – and it ran for 400 miles without any problems at all.’
‘I’m excited about the Tourer,’ says chief mechanic Brett Hawthorne. ‘I don’t think it’s going to lose any speed, even though people think it’s a bit cumbersome. The amount of interest it’s generated already has been worth it.’
Team Dynamics has won over a hundred trophies for Honda
Team Dynamics has won so many trophies racing Hondas that there’s not enough space for all of them in Barry’s office. The next room is crammed with the overflow of glistening silver cups, and apparently they managed to squeeze 102 into the boot of the Tourer last week. ‘We expect this year to be competitive,’ says Barry modestly. ‘As it is every year.’
Work continues on the second car
While the first completed Tourer has already had its first taste of the track, work only started on the second car around six weeks ago, the time it takes for two fabricators to produce a shell. Junior technician Oliver Meads is fitting the bodywork as well as working with Barry to get all the spares in order, and says he’s really excited about the new car.
Technician Jason Cull works on the new car, which is in back to back tests with last year’s Civic hatchback
Technicians Jason Cull and Martin Laycock are responsible for a Civic Tourer apiece, and the secret seems to be that they haven’t changed all that much from their successful 2013 Civic Hatchbacks, which won nine out of thirty races last year. The main change is the engine. The new Tourers will run on Honda’s VTEC TURBO engine, part of the Earth Dreams Technology range launched late last year, and a feature of the new Civic Type R.
Championship dreams
Are there grand ambitions for the Tourer’s first championship? The Civics won the Teams’ and Manufacturers’ crowns over the past four years, with Matt and Flash only just missing out on the Drivers’ last year. No doubt they’ll be pushing the Tourer to its limits, but Barry’s ambitions are somewhat more modest. ‘Each circuit carries its own challenges. We want to get out there and finish every race, and win something – an estate has never won a single race.’
