Rob Austin praises “miraculous” Audi repair job

Rob Austin has heaped praise on his team after a “Herculean effort” to repair his crashed Audi A4 in just two hours after a practice smash at Croft.

Austin qualified an impressive 10th despite a 5G side-on impact with the barriers at Clervaux in second free practice, leaving the driver somewhat sore and the Rob Austin Racing squad with a big task at hand.

But they managed it, even using the passenger door window from team engineer James Weaver’s Audi A4 road car to help complete the job.

Austin said: “They are the A Team of the BTCC pit lane! I made a right mess of things and they put it right. The workload they got through – grinding, fabricating, rebuilding – under great pressure was immense.

“Sherman might have looked a little worse for wear from the outside on track but everything underneath – including crucially the handling – was spot on. An awesome job. If I’d not let the side down in practice then we’d have had time to experiment more with the set-up and perhaps should have been looking at a top three on the grid. Given the situation tenth is a good result but I’m miffed because it should have been better and that’s down to me.

“As it is I’m only half a second off P3 and I know, as ever, that our race pace will be better than our qualifying pace compared to our rivals. I’m going for big results in all three races.”

Team-mate Hunter Abbott was 17th, his best result in the BTCC to date, but he felt that he’d missed out on an opportunity to qualify inside the top 12.

He said: “Three more tenths of a second faster and I’d have been there – it’s that close. The frustrating thing is I know where it was possible to find that time but I drove a bit scrappily and at one corner, where I should have been braking later, my right foot just wouldn’t do it! Still it’s my best qualifying position to date in the BTCC and I’m in with a very classy group of drivers around me which I hope means I can have a good clean first race. Then we’ll just take it from there.”