Colin Turkington: “We don’t need to be pegged back”

Colin Turkington declared himself “really pleased” with his day’s work at Snetterton, and says he doesn’t believe his West Surrey Racing BMW 125i needs to be pegged back.

The championship leader qualified on the front row and was the only driver to hold a candle to the dominant Jason Plato, posting a best time around 0.4 seconds slower than the Triple Eight man.

Speaking after qualifying, Plato said there was “not a hope in hell” that he’d lead into the first corner, and that he’d like to see more done to balance performance between front and rear-wheel drive machinery.

But 2009 champion Turkington said his performance is down to the extensive development work WSR have done on the BMW.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Turkington said: “I’m really pleased with today’s performance. Once again the car has been really fast, and we have a good balance.

“Snetterton’s a technical circuit, and looking at 2013, we’ve really improved the car’s performance in the middle sector, which was our biggest weakness last year.

“We really have improved the chassis, and that’s where we’ve got the gains.

“Theoretically the rear-wheel drive cars are fast off the line, but you saw at Croft the difficulties that you can have. There’s no guarantee that I will lead into turn one.

“It’s a 12-lap race and my focus is to be there at the end, not just turn one.”

Asked if he could see the BMW being penalised further than the longer first gear in 2014, Turkington added: “I don’t think so. The obvious thing is we don’t need to be pegged back. Yes, we were good at Oulton and Croft, but we’ve always been good there – even last year, when we were still developing the car, they were standout weekends.

“Things are back to normal this weekend, and the MG has dominated today. It’s only natural that we as a team are getting faster – it’s our second year with the car, and the second time at Snetterton, so we expect to be further up the grid.

“I can’t see any reason to undo all our hard work.”