Rob Collard disappointed with doughnut penalty

West Surrey Racing driver Rob Collard was hit with a £500 fine and three points on his licence after attempting some celebratory doughnuts after winning the first race at Brands Hatch two weeks ago, a penalty which the Hampshire-based driver believes was too harsh.

The 43-year-old took his first win since Oulton Park 2009 in race one at Brands Hatch, and the first for West Surrey Racing in the BTCC since Rockingham 2009 with Stephen Jelley.

“I was going to practice them but I’m running out of money,” said Collard to TouringCarTimes. “A £500 fine, three points on my licence, my first points for two years for doing something which I thought was a bit of fun. I don’t think the promotion are very sympathetic.”

“It’s difficult when I’ve not had any points on my licence for two years, and the three points is actually for driving in a manner incompatible with safety, and that’s a bad thing to have on your driving record, it’s like having careless driving on your road car licence which will put your insurance up. I’d just done it for a little bit of fun, it’s the first race of the year, to get some happiness going and support behind us and I was devastated with what (the stewards) have done.”

Collard will start fifth for the first race, carrying 18kg of ballast in his BMW 320si now running with a 2.0 litre NGTC-specification turbocharged BMW engine, and reflected on qualifying:

“(The conditions were) just a little bit tricky really, you had to stay out there when it was greasy, it wasn’t very comfortable, the car was skidding all over the place, you had water and your wipers on and we had slick tyres, but we pushed at the right time and was able to get an improvement at the end of the session.”

“I think it actually favoured the front-wheel drive cars. I didn’t expect to be where I was to be honest, I expected the other cars to be a bit quicker.”

“We obviously won at Brands Hatch and it stunned a lot of people and I was very very pleased after race one to actually nail the win.”

“I don’t think we had the quickest car at all that weekend, but we were able to stay out of trouble and get a good finish, but in races two and three the car just ate its tyres unfortunately, and we went backwards. It didn’t handle the weight very well in race two and we trying something different for race three and it was worse. So now we’ve now come here with a clean sheet of paper and the car at the moment is working well and I’m looking forward to the race.”