Rob Collard frustrated despite hitting the front

Rob Collard admitted that there was an element of frustration in his Thruxton weekend, despite moving into a share of the BTCC points lead in the third round of the year.

The WSR driver battled back well from a difficult qualifying session to pick up a hat-trick of top six finishes at his home circuit, with a pair of sixth places either side of a fine podium in race two.

A total of 37 points from the weekend, second only to Adam Morgan, saw Collard move level with Matt Neal in the standings with nine races gone, and he insisted it wasn’t something he had expected after only starting race one from 18th on the grid.

“I didn’t expect this at all, and I really felt we would struggle at Thruxton,” he told TouringCarTimes. “However, WSR have worked really hard on the chassis of the BMW and we were working the tyres really well. I couldn’t have asked for a better car.

“On Saturday night I was scratching my head a lot and I went to bed feeling like a broken man as I thought things had gone away from me in terms of the championship from P18. However, we came back well in race one to get into P6 and just built on that. To get two sixths and a second at a track that hasn’t always favoured me is great.”

However, despite his strong weekend on track, Collard was far from happy with the decision to reduce the length of two of the three races on safety grounds – arguing that the move had unfairly penalised those teams who had worked to manage their tyres in the warm conditions.

“I’m a bit annoyed to be honest as the rules keep changing,” he said. “We’ve been told that we have to run the hard tyre at certain tracks to compensate for the front wheel drive cars and then we had two of the races cut this weekend – with front wheel drive cars winning all the races.

“The fact is that teams have to look at their tyre wear and adjust their cars according to the conditions, and drivers have to drive to the grip levels that are available. They can’t just go and change things.

“We have worked hard to develop our car and the advantage we have worked hard to gain has been taken away. We didn’t engineer our car for the first five laps but to perform in the final four, which is where we knew we would be strong. Instead, things were changed with no negotiation.”

Collard’s view on the decision to shorten the races was shared by WSR team boss Dick Bennetts, who insisted that it worked against those teams who had followed any requests to set their cars up in a specific way to deal with the challenges provided by the quickest circuit on the calendar.

“I fully appreciate Dunlop’s concern because A; there’s a safety factor for accidents and B; a publicity factor for their product,” he said, “but we all get sent an e-mail before the event where they request that we detune the cars because Thruxton is renowned for issues with tyres, so that’s okay.

“We detune the car to come here and then because of the unusually hot weather for early May, which gives a higher load on the tyre, we actually detuned our cars more on Saturday night to deal with the conditions.

“You don’t have any issues unless a driver clips the kerb, but when your drivers are trained and you set your car up to last the distance instead of trying to be quickest, it’s frustrating to be penalised for working to be kinder on tyres by them basically making the race 25% shorter.”