Aron Smith could hardly contain his delight after taking a landmark first every victory for Team BKR in the final British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Rockingham.
Smith, who was reversed onto pole position by virtue of his hard-earned 7th in the second race, managed to maintain his lead in the early stages from Matt Neal and later fended off the advances of double champions Gordon Shedden and Colin Turkington to bring the Volkswagen CC home exactly 0.4 seconds clear.
The victory marks the Irishman’s fourth win in the series, and his first since Oulton Park in 2014, and is equally significant as the first car to claim a win this season with GRPM control components on board.
Speaking to TouringCars.net after stepping from the podium, Smith admitted one of the most enjoyable aspects of the race win was scoring a victory for Team BKR against several larger, better funded and well-equipped manufacturer outlets, especially after the hard work they have put into his campaign.
“It’s huge, it’s just huge for all the guys,” beamed Smith.
“As the year has gone on I’ve met some of my best friends who I’ll know for the rest of my life, so for us to win it’s like a group of mates trying to take on the big teams and to get one over them every now and again is quite sweet.”
He also gave an insight into the psychology of a driver in a race-deciding situation. Smith’s victory was far from straightforward, truncated by the usual safety car disruptions to the final race, and with the champions of the last two season bearing down upon him at a rate of knots.
“Sometimes I find that I just stop thinking,” he explained.
“It’s one of those things where you don’t even realise how difficult it is, you just kinda keep going until it’s over and you’ve won! All of a sudden you look up and there’s one lap left and it’s game on.”
Smith managed to build a three second advantage during the opening exchanges of the race as Matt Neal behind held up the rest of the field on rapidly deteriorating harder compound tyres.
However, a safety car for a controversial incident between Mark Howard and Jack Goff eliminated that advantage, as did another for Warren Scott’s stranded Subaru Levorg GT at turn one later on.
Although admitting the slower pace of Neal had been a big help in the early stages, Smith admitted it was a sickening feeling to repeatedly see his hard work go to waste.
“The safety car took away that advantage, so when Matt [Neal] was behind me I could stretch my legs, I think we set fastest lap at the start and everything and began to really get away. But the safety car took it all away and that made it a little bit more difficult and I’m sure the team sweated it out a bit more.
“It is sickening, because you’ve worked so hard, and I’d gotten to the point where I thought ‘yeah, we can definitely win now’, and then it’s just taken away instantly. So that definitely made it harder, but we came out on top after every restart, which is mad.”
He praised Matt Neal for his car positioning into turn one, as the two nearly made contact after a dead-heat start, but through the high speed turn one the Volkswagen CC and Honda Civic Type-R gave one another a little personal space.
“You are tense at the start, so you’re just trying to not get any wheelspin and get off the track cleanly, so Matt got a jump and kind of squeezed me down into turn one, but left just enough space to stop having contact,” he commented.
Looking ahead to the penultimate round of the season at Silverstone, Smith believes the car is well suited to the circuit layout and is hopeful he can continue his current run of form.
“The Passat is good around Silverstone, it’s always been notoriously fast around there, so I’ll just keep my head down, hopefully qualify a bit better and then see where we get to.”