Rob Collard taking positives from solid opening weekend

Rob Collard leaves the first weekend of the 2014 British Touring Car Championship sixth in the standings, just four points behind Jason Plato, after a strong weekend in the West Surrey Racing BMW 125i, with three finishes in the top six.

The 45-year-old was the top BMW finisher in race one after a late race pass on team-mate Colin Turkington, who was suffering with damage from earlier contact in the race, while he dropped behind his two team-mates in race two after a good start following contact with Matt Neal’s Honda Civic Tourer.

In race three, from the reversed grid pole, Collard was looking set for a finish in the top two, until the soft tyres faded late in the race allowing former champions Matt Neal and Jason Plato to deprive him of a podium finish for the first weekend at Brands Hatch.

“I have to take the positives from this weekend, compared to this time last year where we had zero points from zero finishes, so the Championship has started very strongly for me,” said Collard to TouringCarTimes.

“The first two races were really strong good races and to not get a podium out of that was just frustrating. (For race three) we’re learning this new tyre at the moment, and with two to three laps to go the tyre really started to suffer, we need to improve our set-up to last a bit longer, I ended up leaving Matt (Neal) half a gap and he just punished me.”

In race two, Collard was knocked into a slide at Paddock Hill bend by Matt Neal, which allowed team-mates Colin Turkington and Nick Foster to get ahead of him in the race, and Collard was able to bring it home behind them with minor damage.

“I was a little bit disappointed with what Matt had done, I thought I had the run on him and he’d just let me slot in and we’d have a good race,” said Collard.

“That could have been a disaster for both of us…we shouldn’t be that desperate to make moves like that on the first lap this early in the season, fortunately it didn’t damage too much of the car, I had a bit of a bent steering which I was able to continue with.

Collard and Turkington had two good fights in the first and third races, with Collard coming out on top in race one, and Turkington taking point in race three which gave the 2009 champion the race victory, showing that the West Surrey Racing drivers are ready to fight each other at this early stage of the season.

“We’re here as a team and there are no team orders effectively and we’ve just got to do the best job we can for eBay Motors,” said Collard.

“The eBay Motors team have done such a good job with the car over the winter, and it’s starting to feel like the old 3-Series. I’ve got my mojo back and we’re on the pace.”