Winchester driver Ben McLoughlin heads for the second round of the British GT Champio-nship at Donington on Sunday with his eyes firmly fixed on a podium finish.

McLoughlin and co-driver, ex-Boyzone star Shane Lynch, were running strongly in fourth place in the first round at Brands Hatch when the throttle cable broke and they had to retire.

But the Winchester ace believes the name of their Eclipse Motorsport team will be up in lights soon.

They have replaced last year's Marcos with a brand new TVR Tuscan R for McLoughlin and Lynch to share in the GTO class in the series of one-hour, two driver races.

With delivery of the TVR only a week before the opening round, the team has had little time for testing and the car was dogged by a persistent misfire at Brands. Even so it showed remarkable pace straight away and McLoughlin was able to record fifth fastest time for the GTO grid in limited runs between attempts to cure the problem.

Lynch took the wheel for the opening stint of the race and overtook the EMKA Porsche of Tim Sugden and Steve O'Rourke to complete lap one in fourth place. The Eclipse car ran strongly just a few seconds behind the leading trio for a third of the race, needing just one of those ahead to suffer misfortune to move up into a podium position.

The misfire worsened, however, as the under bonnet temperatures rose, but the TVR still ran strongly up until the driver change stop at half-distance. McLoughlin replaced Lynch in the cockpit and set about chasing down the leaders.

Then, before he had completed a lap, he suddenly lost all power as the throttle cable snapped and his race was over. Had the team been able to test the car thoroughly, this kind of problem would have shown up earlier, but the car's overall performance was certainly encouraging.

"The car has huge potential, it's looking very good indeed", said McLoughlin. "There's a lot of mechanical grip and when the engine runs cleanly there's plenty of grunt. After two laps the misfire set in but we will get it fixed."

Team Principal, John Griffiths, is also optimistic of the season's prospects: "Even with the misfire, we were only two seconds off the pace in qualifying. There's probably a fault in the ECU; with that fixed we'll be right up there."

The Rollcentre Racing TVR of Martin Short and Simon Pullan won the GTO race from Sugden and O'Rourke, while the GT class win went to the Saleen S7 of Ian McKellar and Tommy Erdos.