Colin Turkington admits Croft victory “a good confidence boost”

Colin Turkington admitted that his victory in the final race of the weekend at Croft had been a good confidence boost to now take into the remaining three meetings of the British Touring Car Championship season.

Turkington headed into the weekend sitting fifth in the standings and made the most of the relatively low level of ballast in his car – compared to previous seasons – to qualify on the second row of the grid.

The Northern Irish driver kicked off race day with a solid fourth place in race one having lost out to the soft tyre-shod Honda of Senna Proctor early on but then lost ground in race two when he was run through the gravel at Clervaux whilst dicing with Gordon Shedden and dropped back to seventh.

Luck would be on Turkington’s side however when the reverse grid draw then saw him put on pole for the final race, with the WSR driver nailing the start to retain the lead going into turn one.

From that point on, Turkington was able to remain out front to grab what was his 13th win at the North Yorkshire circuit – extending his advantage as the driver with most wins at the venue to seven.

The win – which came in the 700th race for WSR – means Turkington now sits third in the standings going to Silverstone this week.

“It’s always great to win at Croft and it caps a really good day for me,” he said. “This is a circuit I have always enjoyed, and one where the BMW has always gone well – be that the E90, the 1 Series or the current car. WSR have always delivered the goods and nine times out of ten, we’ve had a package that can win.

“We had to work hard to get into the position to go for the victory this time around, and we showed we had good speed in the car in race two but didn’t get the luck.

“When we were then at the front for race three, I had the speed to ease away, and the win gives the whole team a lot of confidence that we can now take into Silverstone next weekend. It’s tight in the points and anything could still happen.”