Rockingham hosted a BTCC test yesterday, which amongst other things gave us the first chance to see how the Team Aon Ford Focus is getting on with its newly restricted LPG-turbo engine. I can’t find anything official to say that the team was definitely running the detuned engine, but TouringCarTimes reckons it was, and it seems only logical. Plus: the speed traps tell their own story.

It’s fortunate that Rockingham has already hosted a round of this year’s championship. So let’s compare yesterday’s test to April’s meeting.

This, presumably, is the sort of analysis that Alan Gow described as “self-serving guesswork”. Ah well, let’s carry on.

Since everyone – well, Jason Plato mainly – was concerned about the outright straight line speed of the LPG Focus, we’ll concentrate on the finish line speed trap, since it’s the fastest of the three on the circuit. The picture is remarkably clear.

Back in April, Tom Chilton was fastest thanks to that pesky LPG engine, at 110.4 mph. That was well clear of the fastest non-LPG powered driver, who was Matt Neal in free practice 2, at 106.5 mph.

Yesterday, Paul O’Neill in the morning session was the fastest over the finish line, at 105.7 mph. Tom Onslow-Cole was the fastest Focus, at 105.2 mph in the same session.

What that pretty clearly implies is that the LPG Focus is now at about the same level as the competition. Or some of the competition, at least. Plato still seems to be lacking outright grunt, third slowest over the finish line in both sessions yesterday.

But it’s not just about grunt, as shown by the overall lap time classification for yesterday’s test. Andrew Jordan with the NGTC-engine in his Vectra narrowly beat Plato to the top of the time sheets, while Chilton was the top LPG man in 6th – though he was 2nd in the afternoon session.

The top eight overall were covered by less than half a second, and contained five teams, four manufacturers and three types of engine. It’s close enough, then.