Double podium delight for Colin Turkington and WSR

West Surrey Racing’s Colin Turkington enjoyed his strongest weekend of his BTCC return to date at Oulton Park, as his new BMW 125i showed genuine front-running pace for the first time on the way to two podiums.

There were clear indications the 2009 champion would have a good chance on Sunday following an impressive race run in Saturday’s second practice, which proved to be an accurate indication of his performance.

After qualifying seventh, Turkington moved forward to fifth in race one, and advanced two further positions to third in race two.

And in a crazy race three, the Northern Irishman came from eighth on the grid to secure second, his best result of the day.

It all made for a happy driver on Sunday evening – and one who is confident there is more to come from the Next Generation Touring Car machine.

“We had a really good pace from free practice one, and the car has certainly improved. It is easier to drive,” said Turkington to TouringCarTimes.

“At Thruxton and Donington I had a real fight with it, but now it is easier to drive, and I can bring it to the limit. We haven’t found the sweet spot just yet, especially in qualifying where we were still quite a bit off on one-lap pace.

“But the way the car is at the moment, I can race with it. We still need to keep moving forward, but it is very encouraging.

“We have still only had one dry test day. Every time we go out we change the car – sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse, so we are still on a big learning curve. I think we can make the car quite a bit better than it is at the moment.”

Like many drivers, Turkington was in the thick of the action in the final race, which included a dramatic clash with Matt Neal’s Honda Civic.

He said: “It did get a bit rough up at the front. I thoroughly enjoyed it. You have just got to keep moving forward, because if you stop attacking, you get attacked – as I did at Knickerbrook, but luckily we got away with it.”

Next up is Croft, another track where Turkington has traditionally excelled.

He said: “Croft is usually quite similar to here in terms of performance, and our track record is quite good there.

“But it is not going to be easy – every track we are going to it’s for the first time [with the car] and we don’t have a lot of time to get it tuned.”