Rob Austin admits to mixed emotions

Rob Austin said he had mixed emotions despite securing a first top ten grid slot for Handy Motorsport in qualifying for the latest rounds of the BTCC season at Knockhill.

Austin went into the weekend on the back of a strong podium finish last time out at Snetterton, with hopes high of maintaining an impressive record north of the border.

A best time of 52.912secs during the session would see him lap within three tenths of a second of the front-runners and was quicker than he had ever gone in qualifying at the wheel of his Audi A4, although he admitted that he had hoped for more.

“If I’m being honest, I do feel a bit mixed,” he told TouringCarTimes. “Coming onto the weekend, I thought a top ten on the grid was possible, and it’s obviously great to have got the first top ten on the grid for the team.

“However, but I feel personally that there was more on the table from me and I could have gone a bit quicker. The top five wasn’t possible as those guys clearly had the edge on the rest of us, but P6 was certainly there for the taking.”

Austin will now hope to make forward progress across Sunday’s three races and having enjoyed his podium breakthrough at Snetterton, he insisted he was aiming high again this time around.

“We’ll have to see how it goes on race day as I think we have a car that is goon on its tyres,” he said. “If anything, we aren’t working the tyres quite hard enough and with that in mind, race one will be a case of me really learning about how the tyres perform in a race at this circuit.

“I want to stay out of trouble and push on, and it would be great if we could benefit from the reverse grid in race three to get to the front. I didn’t want to do that at Snetterton as I wanted a podium on merit, but now we’ve done that, I’m not bothered if it helps me get towards the head of the field this time around!”