Colin Turkington comfortable with being best of the championship hopefuls at Silverstone

West Surrey Racing’s Colin Turkington will line up eighth on the grid for the first race at Silverstone, the best-placed of the rear-wheel drive cars at a known front-wheel drive favouring circuit, and more critically the top of the main championship contenders, with rivals Ash Sutton and Gordon Shedden tenth and 12th.

Turkington put his BMW 125i M Sport in eighth position just 0.240 seconds from pole, despite carrying 66kg of success ballast as he’s second in the championship.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with eighth, but given the circumstances, I’m content,” said Turkington. “I’m carrying 66kg success ballast so I knew it was going to be a challenge today, but I’m ahead of all the other title contenders, so that’s a positive.

“All I can do is focus on attacking every single lap as hard as I can and extract the maximum from the BMW, which I think I did today. We’ll review the performance tonight, re-set ourselves and get ready for what I’m sure will be three incredibly tight races tomorrow.”