Jack Goff on Turkington collision: “I had nowhere to go”

Tony Gilham Racing driver Jack Goff will have to start from the back of the grid on his BTCC debut alongside 2009 champion Colin Turkington after the two collided at the start of qualifying. That’s assuming the team are able to repair Goff’s Vauxhall Insignia for race day.

The qualifying session was red flagged after Jack Goff crashed into Colin Turkington’s West Surrey Racing BMW 125i, which had spun on the outside of the Druids hairpin.

A number of cars managed to make it around Turkington’s car, but Goff was tailing Adam Morgan’s Cicely Racing Toyota around the corner and hit the unsighted BMW, which saw both cars forced to head back to the pits for repairs and missed the remainder of qualifying.

“Turkington spun on the exit of Druids, and (Morgan) was in front of me and he sort of swerved to the right of him and I had nowhere to go,” said Goff to TouringCarTimes.

“(The damage is) quite substantial, the whole front-end has to come off the car, it’s ripped the mounts and the sub-frame, so it’s quite a big hit,” said Goff.

Goff was 20th in the first practice session and 21st in the second, getting to grips in the cold conditions at the Brands Hatch circuit which saw scatterings of snow fall throughout the day. “In the first session we had a bit of a problem with a leak, in the second session we were just chipping away it really, it was getting better and better and then we had a hit like that and now we’re stuck at the back.”

Despite the damage, the team are hopeful they’ll be able to repair the car for race day, where he will start in 26th place.