Rob Austin confident of strong 2015 after off-season work

A lot of work over the winter break has left Rob Austin confident of his team’s chances come the opening round of the season at Brands Hatch.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes at the official test session at Donington Park, Austin believes the team have come a long way over the winter and are beginning to see the benefits of their off-season work.

“We’ve done a lot of work over the winter,” he said. “The car’s stable and it’s a really good foundation for us. As soon as last year finished we were straight in to work for this year, we haven’t done too much testing as most of the work has been behind the scenes. We feel that this year there’s more to work in the workshop than there is on the track. So far it’s looking to have worked out for us.”

Austin has historically had a good record at Brands Hatch with the car Audi A4 he affectionately calls ‘Sherman’, and now feels that, following their winter work behind the scenes, the team can challenge at the higher end of the field more often.

“We’ve always had quite a quick car at Brands and we think we’ve taken things a step forward over the winter,” Austin continued. “We’ve worked bloody hard and done our best so it’s a bit quicker now. We like to think we can fight for at least a race win there and get some good points in the bag.

“Today we’re quite happy with the pace today and this is one of our weaker circuits, we just want to try and be more competitive at our weak ones and put together a whole championship for a change, rather than the up and down seasons we’ve had recently.”

However, the popular Audi driver does feel that new regulations to bring rear-wheel-drive cars in line with front-wheel-drive cars, particularly off the start line, could result in a disadvantage for his Audi.

“I think it’s a real shame that TOCA are giving in to peer pressure. They’ve taken steps to equalise our advantage which is fine, but at the same time, if they’re going to do that they should equalise the front-wheel-drive advantage.

“I spoke to Colin [Turkington, who comfortably won the 2014 title in a rear-wheel-drive BMW] and he said there’s not a lot in it [between front- and rear-wheel-drive]. There will be something in it now there’s a front-wheel-drive advantage. It is what it is and hopefully they won’t get too carried away with it.”