Rob Austin: “I didn’t think we’d win this year”

Rob Austin said he was beginning to think he wasn’t going to win a race in 2014, before finally standing atop the podium at Rockingham today.

Audi A4 driver Austin said his run of bad luck and incidents had led him to believe it wasn’t going to be his year. But he put those doubts to bed in fine style in Corby, taking the lead off the line and heading every lap of the 16 in the third and final race of the day.

The result has also moved Austin up into the top 10 in the standings, and he now sits ninth, 45 points behind Triple Eight’s Sam Tordoff.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Austin said: “I’m quite proud of the race I drove. Obviously I had a good grid spot, and a nice buffer with Jordan backing everyone up. But to manage those tyres, I am very happy.

“I didn’t think it was going to happen this year. Especially after the prop breaking at Brands, me making a complete hash of Croft, and getting knocked about by the Hondas at Knockhill.

“Then after qualifying 13th I thought ‘we’re not going to win anything’. But the luck was with us today. That’s only the second time in the four years I’ve been doing this that we’ve benefited from the reverse grid.”

The result looked less likely on Saturday night, but a session burning the midnight oil with his mechanic vastly improved things for Austin on raceday. He finished 12th in race one, before advancing to fifth in race two, and securing the front row on the reverse grid draw to help set up the win.

“We tried something in free practice and it didn’t work, so we bailed and bolted on last year’s setup for qualifying, and it didn’t work,” Austin added.

“Me and my engineer Matt were working until midnight on data for a new set up. It went well in race one, but we were bottled up and couldn’t stretch our legs.

“Race two we made a couple of tweaks and it flew. We were umming and aaahing – we wanted to make it a little bit better but were terrified of making it worse! So we left it at that, and hoped for the best.

“We didn’t know how that race was going to pan out at all. All we knew was we’d got to get ahead and manage the pace. The first half of it I was nursing my tyres, and the second half I was flat out.

“The first half I could have been another two seconds down the road, but my tyres would have been dead. I wasn’t sure I was going to win it until the very last lap.”