TONY Gilham goes into the final rounds of his debut season in the VW Cup with his eye on second place.

The Swanley driver took fifth and second at Silverstone last weekend to climb to third in the standings and now travels to Thruxton this weekend for the season's finale.

It is a measure of Tony and the team's steep learning curve this season treacherous driving conditions and serious mechanical problems experienced at Silverstone did not hinder their overall performance as it may have done earlier in the season.

Tony said: "We went up for testing and it was pouring it down.

"We did not know the track at all and so we wanted to get a good test session in to learn it but where it was raining so much we did not learn anything.

"It was a nicer day for qualifying and we went out to do a couple of laps to warm the tyres up and someone crashed into the side of the car so we had to come in to check the damage.

"We were out again but did not have our transponder (a machine which records the timings round the laps) on."

The 26-year-old said: "Without it the car was going to be disqualified so fearing this the team called me in to get it fixed and by the time it was all sorted I only had two laps of qualifying left.

"I went out, did one lap where I was held up by a slower car but had one fine lap where we put it fourth on the grid.

"We were pretty happy in the end."

The opening race was a war of attrition as mechanical problems threatened to end Gilham's race and weekend.

He said: "The first race was a wet one but most drivers gambled and went for full slicks because the sun was out but the track never dried out.

"Our car was getting progressively worse as the race went as both drive shafts collapsed internally so the joints fell apart and crumbled.

"We managed to finish in fifth which was pretty good."

Gilham started in second on the grid for race two.

He got away to a flyer and led for the opening laps.

He said: "We were doing well but because Silverstone is a power circuit we struggled for straight line speed and Paul Taylor's R32, which is so quick it is untrue, powered past us on the straight.

"We had a race-long battle with Alex Dziurzynski but we held him off to take second."

Gilham could not hide his admiration for this pit-crew saying: "The team were working on the car from 11am after the first race to 5pm - changing all the shafts and checking all the problems, they went at it non-stop.

"They have done well for me yet again, they're superb."

The team and Gilham are 40 points off second place and just two ahead of fourth so this weekend's meetingpromises to be an exciting finale.

Gilham said: "We're learning all the time and we will push as hard as possible this weekend."