Colin Turkington was left elated with a second win for Silverline Subaru BMR Racing in consecutive meetings as he led home Jason Plato in the first British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Croft.
The double champion claimed the victory by a margin of 1.353 seconds ahead of team-mate Plato, with Ashley Sutton completing the rostrum to take his maiden podium finish in the series.
Reflecting on an action-packed opener, which included three safety car restarts, Turkington conceded it was a difficult race to manage, particularly with Plato behind, and paid tribute to Team BMR for providing him with a solid car.
“They certainly didn’t make that one easy for me,” said Turkington.
“It was the kind of race where you need to remain 100 per cent focused right to the end.”
“To have three safety car periods is quite unusual, and with the tyre pressures dropping at the lower speeds, I had to carefully manage all the re-starts which was tricky. With Jason not far behind either, there was absolutely no margin for error, but the team gave us both a fantastic car so massive credit to them all.”
He also paid tribute to the strength of the Levorg GT package and believes that the second race, whilst it is set to be more difficult, is still set to herald another good result for the ever-improving squad.
“The Subaru Levorg package is getting stronger and we’re not a million miles away with it now. Of course, I’ll have an extra 75kg on-board in race two – which is effectively another me plus all my shopping – so that will obviously take some speed off, but the chassis is working really well so we should still be in good shape.”