Rob Austin believes that he could have won the final British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Silverstone, feeling that he missed an opportunity for a first victory in three years.
Off the back of two points-less weekends at Knockhill and Rockingham, Austin made a return to top ten form at Silverstone, securing a trio of top ten finishes.
The Handy Motorsport racer qualified in the top ten for the fifth time this year with the sixth best lap, although opting to run the less favourable harder tyre in race one meant he went backwards to finish in ninth.
The second race saw Austin initially slip back, but he put in a battling drive afterwards to reclaim fifth by the chequered flag.
With the top nine being reversed for race three, Austin saw no change to his starting position and he ultimately went on to finish in the same position – leaving the Toyota driver frustrated that he couldn’t have pushed forward to claim a win.
“Off the back of what we’ve had recently, I’m happy to come away from Silverstone with two P5 finishes – but race three was mine, in my head the win was there”, said Austin. “It should have been more than P5.
“We’d taken the pain of the hard tyres in race one, race two was OK and the only threat I saw for race three was [Colin] Turkington jumping me, but I made an awesome start.
“I’m probably feeling more negative than I should be, so I apologise if I am being too negative but I know we had a great chance.
“When the win is there for the taking and you have that opportunity, you want it and nothing less. I’m here to win, the team is here to win, and race three was a chance.”
Austin left the penultimate weekend of the season with mixed feelings, being both pleased to have solved some issues with his car, but frustrated not to have made more of the opportunities presented off the back of the fix.
“It’s taken us a couple of events to resolve the issues we had with the car, but this weekend showed how competitive our package is. Matt, my engineer, gave me a great balance and we’ve come away with some good results and a lot of points.
“Yes, I wanted more from the weekend and I know we were capable of more, but it’s still been a very strong performance.”