Colin Turkington happy to ‘rescue points’ after Donington drama

Colin Turkington insisted he was happy to ‘rescue points’ from the Donington Park weekend after a clutch issue threatened to cost him early ground in the BTCC title race.

The WSR driver qualified on the front row of the grid for the season opener and grabbed a podium finish in race one after a frenetic battle with new team-mate Jake Hill in the early laps.

Things looked like they could go wrong for the four-time champion when a clutch issue saw him fail to get away off the line in race two, with the Northern Irishman instead dropping right to the back of the field.

Able to work his way back through to 14th place at the finish, Turkington then made up more ground in race three to take eighth place, ensuring a triple points score that leaves him eighth in the championship standings.

“It’s been a bit of an up and down weekend but the big positive is that the pace has been in the BMW all weekend,” he said. “We had a strong qualifying session and a good result in race one but then bad luck ahead of race two changed how race day panned out.

“We managed to work our way back up the order to get into the points and then rescued more points in race three, which was important at this stage of the season.”

A major change for the likes of Turkington from the introduction of the new rules is the fact that success ballast is now no longer a consideration, and he admitted that would have an impact on how teams now approached race weekends going forwards.

“Because the weight isn’t going to change from race-to-race, it means we can look to get the car in the window and then not have to worry about the impact adding or removing ballast is going to have,” he said.

“Saying that, we still need to think about the impact that changing track conditions will have, and I think we saw at Donington Park that things were quite a bit different from race two to race three.

“Our first weekend with the hybrid was a step into the unknown for everyone and I’d say that I probably got it right about 70 per cent of the time in the races. There were times when I immediately knew I shouldn’t have used it, or should have saved it until later in the lap, but we we are all learning as we go.

“I think over time, it will become more of a subconscious thing that you just do, but I really enjoyed it and the change in strategy that it involved.”