Photo: PSP Images

Race three incident ruins Jack Goff’s Thruxton day

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Jack Goff was left frustrated with his Thruxton weekend after an incident with Gordon Shedden in race three left him to limp home to the flag.

Goff took eighth in race one and fifth in race two, picking up some healthy points for the West Surrey Racing team, and looked on for a podium result in race three before colliding with Honda’s Gordon Shedden in the run up to the chicane, effectively ending both drivers races there and then.

“Not really pleased with today,” Goff told TouringCarTimes. “The first races were okay but the last race is frustrating, Gordon was on the outside of me and there’s not really room for two cars through the chicane so if there wasn’t contact on entry there was definitely going to be some in the middle or on exit. I think it was 50/50 really, he shouldn’t have put himself on the outside and we got some oversteer on the way in all weekend and we had some oversteer and clipped wheels and we were sort of passengers.”

A major talking point of the weekend was the decision to cut the race from 16 laps down to 12, a decision that Goff did not agree with and felt hindered the team’s chances of a good result after looking after their tyres for the early stages of the race.

“I didn’t agree with the decision,” Goff said categorically. “You can see quite clearly there’s cars out there carrying 75kgs – front wheel drive cars – who are still on the podium so if you drive the car properly, stay off the kerbs and look after your tyres properly so they can last the whole distance you can quite easily do it. It’s more the fact the teams weren’t really listening to Dunlop and they were just going full steam ahead and bashing into the kerbs and that’s why punctures happen. The top teams didn’t get punctures…”

The season now moves on to Oulton Park, which has historically been a strong circuit for the BMW team, and Goff is confident that he can move on and get his first win for WSR.

“Donington and Thruxton were the worst circuits for the team last year so now we’ve got those out the way we can focus on going forward and we’ve got Oulton, Croft and Knockhill coming up so we should be okay.”