Eoin Murray will not race in the opening rounds to the British Touring Car Championship today after a qualifying accident badly damaged his Quest Racing Alfa Romeo 156.

Murray crashed into the barriers at Clearways after losing control of his 156 when its front suspension broke. “I’m gutted – I’m confident we could have qualified inside the top eight,” said the 24-year-old Irishman. “It was only my second flying lap and the car already felt fantastic – a lot better than the last time we were here. Then the right front bottom wishbone snapped going through the corner, broke through the brake pipe and that only left me with rear brakes. It swapped ends instantly and I was a passenger.

“We’re on such a tight budget that we don’t have any spares. It’s so disappointing because I reckon we’d have been good for three top ten finishes tomorrow. Even though I won’t be racing, I’ll still stay around for the Pit Lane Walkabout for the fans," added Murray.

Meanwhile Alfa Romeo will be represented on thegrid as A-Tech Motorsport drivers David Pinkney and Richard Marsh will line up in 17th and 26th places respectively on the grid for today’s first race at Brands Hatch after yesterday afternoon’s qualifying session at the Kent circuit.
 

Both drivers were unable to conduct any testing mileage in the run up to the first round of the BTCC due to their Alfa Romeo 156 cars arriving only last week from Italy. Therefore, they found themselves battling to find a comfortable set-up on the 1.2-mile Brands Hatch ‘Indy’ circuit yesterday. At the end of Saturday afternoon’s 45-minute qualifying session, Pinkney emerged as the fastest A-Tech driver having placed his Super 2000-specification machine in 17th place. However, the Harpenden driver admitted the set-up on his car wasn’t entirely to his liking. “That was a very tough session and we’ve obviously got a lot more work to do when it comes to fully understanding the car, but that’s the situation you find yourself in when you’re not able to do any testing before the first race,” he said. “We need to improve the handling for tomorrow and there are a few things that we can change to reach that target.”
 
Meanwhile, Marsh was only able to complete four qualifying laps after the set-up changes that he applied to his car after the morning’s free practice sessions, didn’t work out. The 39-year-old said: “We applied some settings that were given to us by N Technology (the preparations company that built the Alfa cars in Italy) but they run to different regulations in the world championship and the changes didn’t quite work. We therefore decided to get the car through the minimum laps and get the it back to the pits to get prepared for tomorrow.”
 
A-Tech team principal, Julian Griffin, said the team would be applying a “comfortable set-up” to both of its cars for today’s three races. “The Alfa is notoriously hard to set up and when the drivers haven’t driven it before, you’re fighting an uphill battle,” he said. “But there are things we can do to make the cars more driveable for tomorrow and we hope those changes will offer an improvement in speed and handling.”