Despite claiming a comfortable victory in the opening British Touring Car Championship race of the finale at Brands Hatch, Silverline Subaru BMR Racing’s Colin Turkington insists the result does little to shift his focus mentally with regards to the championship crown.
A record-breaking eight drivers made the journey to Kent with a shot of title glory, but that number has been thinned to seven with the demise of Turkington’s Subaru team-mate Jason Plato, after the latter finished fourth in the opening contest.
Turkington, meanwhile, fended off an early challenge from the Toyota Avensis of Rob Austin and pulled away en route to a 4.570 winning margin.
Despite narrowing his deficit to standings leader Sam Tordoff to within nineteen markers, the Ulsterman insists his focus remains on ending the season in strong form, rather than daydreaming about a third title.
“It’s too early in the day to think about the title but all of these little bonus points definitely help,” commented Turkington.
“Before the racing today it was 37 points, and on any other weekend you’d rule it out but the final at Brands is always quite freaky.”
He underlined his commitment to chasing the possibility in the final two races of the season, and paid tribute to Subaru and the engineering staff at Team BMR for developing the Levorg GT from it’s difficult inception to a title-contending thoroughbred racer.
“My goal was to give myself the best chance I could. Qualifying on pole did that job and so has the race one win. To be an outside contender for the title at this stage is a real credit to the guys.”
The second race gets underway at 14:32.