CHELSFIELD’S Shaun Hollamby was decidedly upbeat at the progress made despite his AmD Milltek Racing team suffering two driveshaft failures in the first round of the British touring car championship at Thruxton.

In mixed weather conditions on Saturday, Hollamby qualified the team’s Volkswagen Golf in 18th place out of 20 entries but a driveshaft failure forced him to retire from Sunday’s first race after just five laps.

With the problem fixed, race two saw Hollamby contest 17th place with the Honda Integra of John George, finishing less than one second behind the established midfield runner and demonstrating the Golf had the pace to sustain such a challenge.

Further changes to the set-up of the Golf helped Hollamby make his best start of the day in the third race.

But he conceded his mistake when he spun at the high-speed Church corner could have contributed to a second driveshaft failure which forced him to retire with just five laps remaining.

The whole weekend was a steep learning curve for Hollamby and team AmD Milltek Racing.

He said: “We’ve learned a lot that we can take forward to the next round at Rockingham in three weeks time, but I’m delighted with the performance of the car and the team.

“We’re developing the car from scratch, so we have no past data to work from but we’ve achieved a lot this weekend and the car handled much better in the last race than it did in Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions.”