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Turkington delight at “one lap shootout” pole success

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Colin Turkington has revealed he feared he wasn’t going to get a shot at pole position before his dramatic late dash to the top of the times at Croft.

The West Surrey Racing man lost 10 minutes of the session with a drivetrain problem, and thought his BMW 125i wouldn’t get its tyres up to temperature in the four-minute finale after a red flag interruption.

But he managed to overcome the issues to break the qualifying lap record, on a circuit where he and BMW have always performed well.

It was the first pole position for the new NGTC machine, which has been making significant steps forward in recent races.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Turkington said: “I could feel there was good potential in the car, if we could just get it pinned down a bit at the rear. We managed to do that for qualifying.

“It has been very tricky today just trying to get a run in. There have been a lot of red flags and wet weather.

“We learnt nothing in free practice two. The car was better in qualifying,  but it was far from a straighforward session. I had a problem with the drivetrain, so I lost probably about 10 minutes.

“It really did become a one-lap shootout, and the car was good enough to let me do it.

“I did think that would be it with four minutes to go. When they said ‘you are going to get out again, but you’ll only get one lap’, I thought it wasn’t going to happen, because it takes us two laps to get the tyres in.

“But we managed to get two laps, and we did it on that [second] lap.”

Regarding the improvements made to his car in recent weeks, Turkington said: “Our performance was very good at Oulton Park, and it was clear we had improved. We had a test at Mallory Park on Wednesday, and made a small gain there.

“All the ingredients have just added up to put me on pole.”

Looking forward to raceday, when rain has been forecast, Turkington added: “Dry is ideal, but we have got to take what comes, and maximise the opportunity. I’ve no idea what this car is going to be like in the wet, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”