Rob Collard believes that Team BMW ‘couldn’t be starting from a better platform’ after testing the new BMW engine at last week’s British Touring Car Championship season launch at Donington Park.
Collard was the only one of West Surrey Racing’s three drivers to run the new BMW B48 engine at the Media Day, which was putting in its first miles after not having been tested at any other point during the off-season, with the engine not being used during testing in Spain.
The engine ran smoothly during the test, and Collard was cautiously optimistic after the afternoon test session, having clocked up 41 laps of running.
“[The engine] seems to deliver the power very well when you hit the throttle and its shown lots of potential,” said Collard to TouringCars.Net. “Is it going to be a championship winning engine? It’s hard to say at this moment because that’s the first time it’s been on the track today.
“The most important thing for us today is that we’ve been running it to make sure its reliable, so we’ve been in and out of the pits a lot, doing lots of different mapping and checking temperatures and pressures and all of that sort of stuff, and it’s run faultlessly, so all of the signs are good.
“The gains in this championship are very small, you don’t get into something and it goes a second a lap faster just because it’s a new component.”
Despite his cautious optimism over the engine, Collard insists that he couldn’t be in a better position for the forthcoming season, which will be his tenth with WSR.
“For 2017 we couldn’t be starting with a better platform with the new engine and the new Dunlop tyre.
“With the car that we have now there’s no reason any one of us isn’t [going to be] right at the front of the championship at the end of the year.
“I truly believe that the car is good enough to win the championship. It was good enough last year, there was just a little bit of bad luck at different times throughout the season. Going forward now I feel we’ve got a better platform to start from.”