Colin Turkington: “Anybody can win at any circuit”

West Surrey Racing’s Colin Turkington lost the lead of the drivers’ championship at Rockingham, but stays closely in touch with new leader Ash Sutton after a strong weekend at Rockingham, leaving 12 points behind the Subaru driver, declaring that the formbook is now out of the window.

While Rockingham has previously seen a mix of results between front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive cars, it was the rear-wheel drives that dominated at Rockingham, and while the upcoming Silverstone and Brands Hatch circuits have typically favoured front-wheel drive cars, the Northern Irishman says that may well not be the case this year.

“There’s no pattern this year,” he told TouringCarTimes. “Anybody can win at any circuit. There’s so many different permutations with ballast and tyres, there’s no track where I think I’m concerned about going to. There’s six races and six chances to score well, so that’s the focus.”

Turkington scored 35 points over the Rockingham weekend, the joint-third best along with Ciceley Racing’s Adam Morgan, with title rival Ash Sutton scoring the most, and Eurotech’s Jack Goff the second highest over the weekend.

“It’s been a positive weekend,” he added. “I scored really good points and got a podium, that was always going to be tricky coming into the weekend with maximum ballast.

“We’re still lacking a bit of pace, so we’ve still got to find speed to really challenge. We’re doing our best on all fronts, I think we just need to find more performance from somewhere.”

The two-time champion says he’s not paying too much mind to what his rivals are doing as that’s beyond his control, and won’t count out team-mate Rob Collard or Honda’s Gordon Shedden, even though their championship challenges were severely dented, with both drivers not scoring in two of the day’s three races on Sunday.

“I have my own way of going about it, and I’m just really focussed on myself and I can’t look that much at what the others are getting up to,” he said. “I’m just sticking to my strategy and trying to maximise what I have.

“There’s still six races to go, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know you can’t rule any of the guys up the sharp end out.”