Rob Austin Racing struggle with damage at physical Croft

Rob Austin Racing made the most of the rear-wheel-drive friendly nature of Croft to take a best qualifying result of the year and net a top ten result.

Rob Austin took one of the team’s Audi A4s to seventh in Saturday’s qualifying, but the soft tyre saw him unable to keep up with his rivals in the opening race, dropping down to 13th by the time of the chequered flag.

However, setting the seventh fastest time saw Austin battle with Tom Ingram and, after Ingram’s tyres had dropped off the cliff, Gordon Shedden, having held sixth for a sizeable portion of the race. The Audi driver was eventually beaten by the Honda driver, but duked it out with Rob Collard until the finish line. Unfortunately for Austin, race three was not as enjoyable, with damage from incidents on track forcing him to end his race early.

The race I felt was going to come to us but then, for the second meeting in a row, people simply started driving into my car,” said Austin. “The second hit up the back sent me into another car so we had to retire with heavy front and rear-end damage. It’s utterly needless. I had a perfectly good hard but fair battle with Shedden – really enjoyable in fact – but then you get some drivers who just don’t seem to know how to do it. Not impressed really as you expect better at this level.”

Hunter Abbott had a similar third race, with considerable damage to the rear end also inflicted to the team’s second Audi. Despite the damage, Abbott was able to finish the race in 16th, where he finished race one, having taken a points scoring finish in race two with 12th.

“Race one I had a typical touring car rub with another driver and came off second best with a quick spin but still fought back to only just finish just outside the points,” offered Abbott. “More importantly I set the ninth fastest lap time to give me P9 for the race two grid – my best starting position in the BTCC. Race two was very hard fought with a group of us together. Andrew Jordan managed to squeeze past me which cost me momentum and a couple more were able to come by as well. Twelfth place in the end was still promising but without that one moment I felt I could have had P7. Again the pace was good.”