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Leslie hopeful for BTCC return

David Leslie returned to the BTCC this weekend in an ex-works Nissan Primera, like the one he took to second place in the 1999 championship. The Scot had a difficult time in qualifying, lining up last of the top class cars in the sprint race, and eighteenth and last overall in the feature. However, Leslie suggested that the Primera will still provide him with a car capable of winning

"If you look at Matt Neal's performance in his Primera, he's right up there," explained Leslie. "He was second for a long time in the first session and ended up third on the grid for both races and that's the sort of times we reckoned we should have been doing to be honest. I looked at my times from last year, before I came here and we ended up doing something like a 1m35.5s lap in the warm-up and nobody's got that low yet.

"To be fair, you wouldn't expect them to, because they're not using as many tyres as last year," he added. "Extra sets always helped tremendously to find that last tenth of a second or whatever. That's good for budgets, but it makes it harder to get the ultimate speed out of a car."

Leslie continued that he would be able to recover from his lowly grid spots, but was not holding too many high hopes - even if the threat of rain becomes a reality.

"At the beginning of the race I will be very much worse off, because I'm starting at the back and I won't be able to see anything, but the car's good in the wet, and I like it," he explained.

"A wet feature race could be a good idea for me. Anything that turns the tables upside down could play into my hands."


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