Sore Rob Austin confident of making qualifying

A sore Rob Austin is still confident of making qualifying after his hefty off in second practice at Croft – and says the biggest hit he’s taken is to his pride.

Austin crashed at Clervaux shortly after setting the sixth fastest time in the session, impacting the barrier side-on and ripping it out of the ground.

The latest instalment in a less-than-straightforward day followed an incident in first practice with Fabrizio Giovanardi, which saw Austin hit a tyre stack and damage the right front of his Audi A4.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Austin said he was confident of a shot at pole position had he enjoyed two trouble-free sessions.

He has since tweeted to say he needs a driver’s door window to be able to take part in qualifying, and is appealing for any willing Audi owners in the area to get in touch with him.

Austin said: “FP1 was a misunderstanding between me and Giovanardi. I caught him so quickly and thought he wasn’t on a quick lap, so would have just let me through. He didn’t see me and turned in- he just touched me, and in avoidance I hit a massive tyre bundle.

“FP2 was just stupid – why was I trying that hard? We’d not even got the tyres up. I had a lock-up, went in too deep, got onto the dirty stuff and that was game over.

“I made a right mess of the barrier! It’s bent over and came right out of the ground.”

Thoughts now turn to qualifying, and Austin is confident his team can turn the damaged Audi around.

He said: “It [the crash] spread the load fairly evenly across the car. The NGTC components are pretty tough, so I think we’re going to be alright.

“The boys are confident. I push them hard and they are well renowned for performing miracles. If anybody’s going to do it, they are going to do it.

“We didn’t get a chance to try anything, so we’re going to make a couple of tweaks which are a bit of a stab in the dark. It just needs a little tweak and we’ll be bang on it. We still had loads more to come.”