Stephen Jelley left frustrated by missed opportunity

Stephen Jelley admitted he had been left frustrated by a missed opportunity to secure his best result of the BTCC season by far at Knockhill.

The Team Parker Racing driver headed for Scotland having picked up a best finish of just 14th place in his second season back in the series, and first at the wheel of the BMW 125i M Sport that the team acquired over the winter from West Surrey Racing.

A strong performance in qualifying saw Jelley snare a place on the front row of the grid and he looked well set to make the most of his grid slot when he ran at the sharp end of the field throughout the opening race until contact from Colin Turkington at Clarks saw him go off into the gravel.

A further DNF followed in race two when Jelley was forced to bring the BMW back into the pits to retire, which meant a 14th place in race three after a recovery drive through the field was little reward from a weekend that had promised much, but failed to deliver.

“Unfortunately motorsport is horrible sometimes,” he said. “We have proved this weekend that when we get it right, we are as good as anyone and the car has been mega all weekend. We deserved a podium in race one but it wasn’t to be, and it certainly wasn’t our fault. Colin made a mistake, misjudged his braking and that was it.

“It’s one of those things that happens and I’ve experienced it in the past when you try and try to pull something off and then it goes wrong through no fault of your own. Oh well, we can’t change it now…”

Despite the disappointment of only picking up a single point finish from the weekend, Jelley did admit there were plenty of positives to take away from the trip to Knockhill.

“There are improvements we can take from here that will help to improve our performance at other circuits as well,” he said. “If we’d known what we know now at the start of the season then we would have been more competitive throughout the year and would have been in a position to score points from the word go at Brands Hatch. As it is, we’ve had to learn the car and grow as a team and it has taken us a little bit longer than we hoped to get to this position.

“We know Silverstone will be tough as we aren’t quick in a straight line but Brands Hatch should be mega and we’re hoping we can repeat the pace we have shown here.”