“Gutted” Rob Austin plots raceday fightback

A “gutted” Rob Austin said he felt a top six was on the cards in qualifying at Rockingham, after winding up 13th on the grid for the first of today’s races.

Despite the disappointment, Austin said he believed he could still fight for podiums on the track where he took his maiden BTCC win in his Audi A4 last year.

Austin, who set a best time of 1m23.578s, said: “I am very, very, very disappointed – gutted in fact. I couldn’t get the car working to its optimum and even though I am only four tenths of a second off fourth the level of competition in the BTCC means I’m a lot further back than I was aiming for – I really felt a top six was on the cards.

“It’s left me needing to do a lot of overtaking in race 1 to give myself a good grid position for race 2 but I believe we have the pace in race trim to come back at a lot of the cars ahead of us. Podiums are still possible and that is what I am going for, but race 1 will play a big part in that.”

Austin’s team-mate Hunter Abbott suffered a terminal loss of drive on his first flying lap, and will start from 31st and last for the first race.

He said: “I was towards the end of the lap and suddenly there was virtually nothing when I put my foot down. Luckily there was just enough left to crawl back to the pit lane in first gear but that was it, game over. The team really went to town on the car to try and fix it and get me back out there, but clearly it’s something major that’s gone wrong.

“It is frustrating as Rob and I had set near-identical lap times in the earlier second free practice session. I was confident of qualifying inside the top half but now I’ve really got it all to do. But Rob obviously had a win here last year and we know the Audi is very good in race trim around here as well so let’s see how far I can get.”