Colin Turkington: “We reached our potential”

Colin Turkington insisted that West Surrey Racing had reached its potential after securing a top six position on the grid for the opening BTCC race of the weekend at Snetterton.

Despite the additional ballast on his BMW 330i M Sport, the current championship leader was the quickest rear-wheel drive car in the session as he lapped noticeably quicker than he had done in either free practice session.

Fifth on the grid means Turkington will start ahead of his title rivals and the Northern Irishman said he was pleased with the performance on track.

“I wouldn’t say it was unexpected because we know there was time to find in qualifying,” he said. “The car was tricky in practice but with weight, it takes time to find the optimum balance. We worked hard to make improvements and when we put new rubber on in qualifying, everything was better.

“We took a big step forwards, but it was always going to be tough here and the weight took the edge off as it should. I think we reached our potential.”

Turkington’s performance came despite the fact that all cars apart from the BMWs have been given a small increase in boost, whilst the 330i M Sport is also now running with a different ride height after the re-introduction of the Infiniti Q50 led to changes in the centre of gravity rules for rear-wheel drive cars.

Although not commenting directly on the changes, Turkington said he felt WSR had done the best job possible and was now ready for the challenge of race day.

“I don’t think I should comment on that [the changes] but what I’ll say is that you have no idea what others are doing,” he said. “What is important is that we hit our maximum today, but we have work still to do and we have to focus on ourselves. It’ll be a tough day tomorrow but we’re ready for it.

“We had a plan before the weekend on which way to go with the tyres because of the different rules and I’m going to stick with that. It [the rule meaning drivers must use all three compound of tyre] will either do very little or it will mix things up beyond belief – and knowing the BTCC, it’ll probably be the latter!”