Rob Austin takes first podium at Rockingham

Rob Austin took his first podium finish at Rockingham in race three, battling with Triple Eight’s James Nash for the win, and put on two strong through-the-field drives to take points in all three races in his NGTC-spec Audi A4, and responds to criticism of the competitiveness of the NGTC cars.

After qualifying in third place on Saturday, the fastest of the turbo cars on the grid behind the Chevrolet duo of Jason Plato and Paul O’Neill, Austin was targeting a victory on race day but came up just one place short.

“We clearly had the pace. I feel like we’ve had the quickest car all weekend, it’s been on rails,” said Austin to TouringCarTimes.

“The update we got on Thursday night, the new roll bar and rockers and so on we got for the NGTC package has just completely transformed the car. Whereas before we could wrestle a time out of it, now it just comes.”

“It’s just a shame about that first (race), Paul (O’Neill) couldn’t have been more apologetic but what can you do,” said Austin, referring to the incident on the first lap between Austin and O’Neill, which saw him knocked out of second place.

Austin fell down to 22nd but worked his way back up the order to finish seventh, which is where he should have started on the race two grid, but the team missed the deadline to get onto the grid which forced him to start from last place for race two, where he again drove through the field and up to ninth on the 25 car grid.

“After we spun off and I came through in race one, I had so much contact on the way that it’d just done a lot of damage, every body panel on the car, we’d broken the diff mount, we’d knocked the tow out, it was just too much to do in one go. We went off the first race at Knockhill and backed into the tyres but surprisingly that was far less work than all the little bits caused in the first race.”

“Still, we were only about 15 seconds late for the pit lane, which was very annoying. The last thing I said to the boys on the pit lane was ‘right, let’s do it all over again’.”

In race three, Austin passed Rob Collard for the lead into Deene, but was passed by James Nash a few laps later in the Vauxhall Vectra. In the later stages of the race, Austin had closed right up to Nash and was battling the young Triple Eight driver hard for the win, but to no avail.

“I needed one more lap,” said Austin.

“They’re just lighter, they don’t have all the weight to pull down the straight, I can’t keep with them in a straight line and unfortunately if you’re slow in a straight line, as Plato I’m sure will tell you, it’s really difficult to overtake.”

The full-specification Next Generation Touring Cars of Rob Austin, Frank Wrathall and Daniel Welch were hit with a 0.05 bar boost reduction for this weekend after a competitive showing at Knockhill, and with an equally strong performance at Rockingham with both Wrathall and Austin close to victory in races two and three, some team’s have muted their should be another.

“I don’t know, everybody’s kicking up a stink, they all seem to think me and Frank can’t drive, we’ve just got more power, more grip, more this, and it’s simply not the case,” said Austin.

“We’ve got a bit more grip, we’ve got a bit more power but we’re a hundred kilos heavier. I’d rather have less power and less grip and not have somebody sat next to me…nobody seems to be appreciate that.”