Five Questions with Marc Hynes

After a tough weekend at Oulton Park, I caught up with Quantel Bifold driver Marc Hynes and what his thoughts of the weekend were.

AF: Marc, how do you feel the weekend has gone for you?

MH: I think we stepped forward on Saturday; the wet practice times were quite good, 4^th and 6^th. We qualified 8^th in the dry which is a step forward, as I’m still trying to get used to front wheel drive so that was positive. Sunday we had a pretty poor start in the first race and dropped a couple of places and ended up finishing tenth. I got punted off on the first lap of the second race and the same happened again later on which was a bit frustrating, then in the last race in the wet we had a bit of a tangle down the escape road in the first lap and caught back up a little bit, so in the end a frustrating race day but a positive Saturday.

AF: The car is starting to show some good pace, you must be happy with that?

MH:  Yeah the pace is getting better, Saturday proved that. The rear wheel drives looked quite fast from the off this week so I think all in all we’ve stepped forward on pace so happy enough but frustrated with the results, not good enough really.

AF: How have you found racing at Oulton Park this weekend?

MH: Well it’s the first time I’ve been here in 15 years; it’s always a great circuit but it’s not the easiest place to pass in one of these and it definitely requires a bit of contact and nudging people out the way but as I say it’s a brilliant circuit. I think if you go to most paddocks in the world people have raced around here from Jim Clark to Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, whoever they are they’ve all cut their teeth around this track and I bet it ranks up in the top 6 of everybody’s tracks worldwide, it’s a real great place to come

AF: How have you found the transition from what you’ve been doing in the past to BTCC?

MH: Well I’ve been out of racing for 6 years so it’s been a long time, so firstly I’ve got to get to grips with coming back into racing again. I think I’ve picked a year which is probably the hardest ever in touring cars, well certainly the hardest since the 90s. Front wheel drive definitely takes some getting used to, there’s very little grip compared to what I’ve done in the past, it’s very easy to overdrive and if you get power understeer in a front wheel drive car it starts taking you off away from where you want to be going whereas rear wheel drive are pointing you in the right direction so there’s a lot to learn, a lot to get back in to but slowly but surely getting back into a bit of form and hopefully just keep improving the pace.

AF: What are your predictions for Croft?

MH: Croft’s a track that I’ve always loved, the last time I ever raced there was F3 and I won the race there which was a good memory and it’s a great circuit, great fun so we’ll see what the touring cars are like around there.