Photo: PSP Images

Rob Collard: “The tyres just fell off a cliff”

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West Surrey Racing’s Rob Collard went from second to 16th during the course of the second race of the day, struggling on the soft tyre which also worked against his BMW team-mates in race one, as well as against his fellow competitors, struggling with a lack of straight-line speed in the 125i.

Collard, who briefly led the championship after the first race when he won from fifth on the grid ahead of the two Team BMR Volkswagens of Aron Smith and Jason Plato, started from fourth on the grid for race two and leapt to second at the start, but started to falter as early as lap six and began to tumble down the order, carrying 75kg of success ballast as penance for his victory.

“We went for a strategy of the normal tyre in race one, as my two team-mates went for the soft tyre race,” said Collard to TouringCarTImes. “I didn’t anticipate to win that race (anyway) carrying 75kg in race two. We had the glory of race one, I would like to have finished a bit higher in that race and at least have finished in the top ten, but these tyres and the weight, it just fell of the side of the cliff.”

After Priaulx and Tordoff dropped down the order in race one, Collard admitted the team had tried to tackle the prospective drop-off in performance, but to no avail.

“We modified the car. When you consider how quickly Andy and Sam fell back, and they had no weight in…so I feel we had made progress. It’s just unfortunate that I just got fired out on the dirt a few times. The (cars with the) TOCA engines are just so fast on the straights, they’re pushing me coming down the straight here and I feel like I’m going 10mph a faster, it’s just ridiculous, there’s no parity with top speed here.”

Looking ahead to race three, when the majority of the field will run with the soft tyres, while all three BMWs have now completed their mandatory race with Dunlop’s soft tyres.

“It’s hard to predict what people have done with their cars, but I’m hoping I can pick a few off and maybe get a top six finish in race three, that’d be a good weekend for me,” he added.