Rob Collard confident race one pace can continue

Rob Collard was confident the race was going to come to him as he managed his tyres en route to victory in the first race at Knockhill.

Collard started the race from fourth on the grid but soon found himself behind race leader Mat Jackson and team-mate Andy Priaulx. However, as the two leaders’ tyres began to fade, Collard made his move and never looked back from there.

“I knew we had a good car,” Collard told TouringCarTimes. “I didn’t quite get the maximum in qualifying which has always been my weakness with the NGTC car. However I knew being that close to Andy and qualifying fourth we’d be in for a good weekend. We had great pace in the car, I knew it was only a matter of time before the race came to me.

“You could see Jackson was starting to fade, but Andy was aswell. I wasn’t getting frustrated but I knew I had a much quicker car and had to just pick my moment and made good clean moves on both of them and the rest was history, I was able to just pull away.”

Collard is now looking ahead to race two, believing he can transfer his pace in race one to race two, despite carrying extra success ballast and running on the harder tyre.

“We’ve got to adjust the car for the weight,” Collard explained. “What we have to focus on is setting the car up for the weight, I’ve won here with maximum ballast here in the old 3-series. People have been winning with maximum ballast, but we don’t know how that’s going to effect the car around here with the weight. Jason and Gordon struggled in qualifying so we really don’t know, we won’t know until five laps in to the race if its going to pan out.”