Colin Turkington delighted with top three in frantic session

Colin Turkington was happy to secure third on the grid for the first round of the 2014 British Touring Car Championship in a close and packed qualifying session, with 29 cars vying for space on the short 1.2 mile Brands Hatch Indy circuit, with traffic a key factor.

The 2009 champion set the pace in the early running in the 30 minute session, with pole position changing hands no less than eight times during the first ten minutes.

Turkington battled back to third, just seven-hundredths of a second behind pole-sitter Andrew Jordan before the end of the session, and admits he’s happy with the result considering all the unknowns going into this weekend.

“I had no expectations, as it’s the first time we’ve all run together besides from media day, so I didn’t know if we were going to be the front end of the grid, the middle of the grid or where, so the top three is ideal really for us,” said Turkington to TouringCarTimes.

“It hasn’t been easy today for us finding the right balance, and even through qualifying we were changing the car, but we got somewhere close in the end. I had to work pretty hard to get that lap.”

Almost everyone experienced trouble with traffic at the shortest circuit on the calendar, with Turkington admitting he was also caught out on a number of occassions.

“It probably affected everybody’s run,” he said. “It’s just trying to manage it and seeing who’s in front of you and trying to work out if you’re going to catch them or not; so I had quite a few aborted laps, but it’s just about whether the laps you are going to do are good enough.”