Aron Smith ready for a holiday after tough Thruxton

It was a weekend to forget at Thruxton for Aron Smith, who failed to take a single point away from the three races around the fastest circuit on the calendar.

Smith had enjoyed a successful start to the season, visiting the podium at both Brands Hatch and Donington Park, but suffered a terrible run of luck at Thruxton, with the Team BKR Volkswagen driver already turning his attention to Oulton Park.

“It’s one of those days where you wake up in the morning and think about what a nightmare it’s been,” Smith told TouringCarTimes. “It was a terrible day, no-ones fault really, we were unlucky in race one when everyone bunched up and we had nowhere else to go and grass in the radiator. Race two we had a component failure, which to be fair everything breaks now and again and race three we had a different component failure, just seriously unlucky. But it happens, we’ll bounce back, car is better around Oulton than it is here, so that’s good.”

With a number of tyre failures in race one, the decision was made to shorten the race distance for races two and three to 12 laps in an attempt to protect the Dunlop rubber. Smith didn’t feel this decision was correct, but said he wouldn’t have minded so much if the teams and drivers were told it was a possibility before going in to free practice.

“I don’t think it was the right move mainly because if we were told at the start of the weekend that that was even a possibility I wouldn’t have spent all my free practices tuning the car to make sure I can go 16 laps,” he explained. “Basically the decision that was made after race one destroyed all the work we’d put in over all of Saturday in one fell swoop. I think it’s something we should have voted on as it royally put us on the back foot. I had no idea, I found out a little bit during race two so properly, properly out of the blue. Which I don’t think is the way any decision like that can be made.”

While Smith has already turned his attention to the next meeting in four weeks’ time, Smith’s immediate thoughts are on enjoying the break, and recharging his own batteries between the two meetings.

“I’m going on holiday, that’s my plan really,” said Smith with a big smile on his face. “The car will be good at Oulton, we’ll get it all checked over and come back strong. But first we’re going to relax, I think I’ll have a Domino’s tonight on the way back to the hotel.”