Mikey Doble at Snetterton: A Hot Audi, Some Family Faces and a Reset for Oulton

Snetterton was the weekend the Audi was always going to find difficult. Long fast straights, sustained high speed, scorching Norfolk heat, and a brand new car with three race weekends of development on its bonnet. The result was a tough hand for Mikey Doble , the LKQ Euro Car Parts with Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon coming home P14, P13 and P11 across the three races, dropping him from third to eighth in the Drivers' Championship but with the Independent class lead still intact.

Some weekends you charge. Some weekends you survive, you bank what you can, and you get to the next track. This was a survive weekend.

The heat. The straights. The overheating.

In-car temperatures touched 60°C during free practice. Drivers were resorting to leaf blowers in the pits between sessions to bring the cabin temperature down. The Norfolk weather forecast for the weekend was "scorching" and the forecast was right.

For the Audi A3 Saloon, this was the first real test of the car's cooling under sustained load. Snetterton 300 has the longest flat-out straight on the calendar at the back end of the circuit, and the heat soak through the engine bay punishes anything that hasn't been fully developed yet. The straight line speed Mikey expected wasn't there. The car was running rich on cooling and rich on power, and the lap times reflected that. P11 in free practice, P14 in Race 1, P13 in Race 2, P11 in Race 3. Solid driving, no driver errors, but the package fighting against itself in conditions it hasn't been calibrated for yet.

Motorsport Week called it correctly mid-race two: "the heat-struggling Audi of Mikey Doble". That's exactly what it was.

What still went right

Two things matter from this weekend that won't show up on the race-finish sheets.

First, Mikey leaves Snetterton still leading the Independents class alongside Gordon Shedden. Three Independent class points-paying finishes, no off-track moments, no damage, no retirements. When the car couldn't deliver pace, the driver brought it home cleanly every single time. That's how you protect a championship campaign on the rough weekends.

Second, the Audi cooling and aero package now has three race weekends of real-world data feeding back into the Power Maxed Racing workshop. Snetterton is the toughest aerodynamic and thermal test on the calendar bar Thruxton. If the team can extract what went wrong from this weekend, the rest of the calendar gets easier.

The Doble family in the paddock

One of the storylines of the wider TOCA weekend was the Doble family showing up across multiple categories. Brother Isaac Doble took a maiden BRSCC Fiesta Junior Championship win on Saturday, fending off cousin Chris Doble in a Doble-versus-Doble lead battle that became a multi-car scrap by the end of lap one. Race 2 went to Dara McInerney with Isaac second and Chris fourth. Race 3 in wet conditions saw the Doble pair lead early before McInerney pounced at the restart. Two podiums for Isaac, race-winning pace from both Dobles on the weekend, and the racing family name showing up at the right end of a 29-car grid in one of the fastest-growing junior championships in UK motorsport.

The Doble racing legacy isn't a marketing line. It's three drivers across two championships in the same TOCA paddock, all of them on the pace, all of them in podium contention. Mikey's race weekend didn't deliver the result the form suggested it should — but the broader Doble story at Snetterton was a long way from a quiet one.

The partners

The partners on Mikey's Audi A3 Saloon at Snetterton:

• LKQ Euro Car Parts — title partner of Mikey's car, part of the wider LKQ Europe group, the dominant vehicle parts distribution brand in the UK
• Power Maxed Racing — the Bidford-on-Avon based team running the Audi A3 Saloon programme
• The Dirt Terminator — pressure washing partner, second race weekend on the car
• Casesuk.com — phone case specialists, on the car since Round 1
• Steel Seal — title partner of the third Power Maxed Racing car for Dexter Patterson

When the racing goes against you, the partners stay on the car and the brand still gets paid for the weekend in coverage, screen time, social activation and content. Every TV cutaway to the back of the Audi pack put LKQ Euro Car Parts and The Dirt Terminator in front of the ITV4 audience. That's the part of motorsport sponsorship a lot of brands miss when they look at the result sheet first. Coverage doesn't only happen at the sharp end.

If you're a brand looking at putting your name on a car in BTCC or any other paddock, we can help.

The championship picture

After Snetterton:

• P8 in the Drivers' Championship on 79 points (was P3 going in)
• Joint leader of the Independents class with Gordon Shedden
• 95 points off Sutton, but only 15 off P5 Ricky Collard and 13 off Charles Rainford in P3
• LKQ Euro Car Parts with Power Maxed Racing still leading the Independent Teams' table

The championship is long. Mikey has six race weekends still ahead of him to claw points back. The car needs a thermal and aero refresh to be competitive at Thruxton in particular, and the team know it. Oulton Park is next on 6-7 June, a flowing, twisty track that suits the Audi platform far better than Snetterton ever was going to. This is a reset weekend, not a wash.

The content side

SuperHub were trackside across the weekend producing content for Mikey's channels and the wider Power Maxed Racing operation. Driver reactions, sponsor activation posts, race-by-race stills, the full programme. Tough race weekends are actually where the content operation earns its keep — anyone can make a podium look good. Making a difficult weekend tell its proper story so the sponsors see what really happened and the fans understand the context is the harder, more valuable job.

What comes next

Oulton Park on 6-7 June. Different track, different challenges, different opportunities. Mikey's still in the championship hunt. The Audi will be better in cooler weather and on a circuit that demands cornering rather than top speed. We'll see.

SuperHub is the marketing partner for Mikey Doble and works with brands across the BTCC paddock on motorsport sponsorship and content. To talk about putting your brand into motorsport, book a call or drop us a line.

Race results sourced from the official BTCC timing partner, TSL Timing , and the official BTCC website.