HMS Racing’s Rob Austin feels his new Alfa Romeo Guilietta has a lot more potential to unlock after he scored a podium in the final BTCC race of the day at Brands Hatch.
BTCC race winner Austin believed a maiden victory was possible as he started the race from reverse-grid pole, but was pleased to score a podium for the Italian marque on its return to the series.
He also spoke out against Ciceley Motorsport’s Adam Morgan on his technique to get past the HMS Alfa.
“A win was always on the cards,” said Austin. “But we’ve never bolted softs on it before, so we didn’t really know what to do with it but we just gave it our best.
“I tried to look after them but front left went quite early compared to Tom [Ingram] and then it died completely.
“Morgan – I kind of expect that to get reversed because it was push to pass, but we’ll see. All in all, we’ve got to be very happy with our weekend.”
Austin’s fortunes became more favourable as the day wore on, after a difficult debut for the car in the first race, in which contact with Tom Oliphant’s Mercedes forced him to retire with a broken right-rear towlink.
“We were unlucky in the first one, having not driven the thing in the wet before.
“It was a little bit cautious and one of the new lads, it obviously caught him out, locked up, slid into me and obviously broke my suspension so.
“After that bit of appalling luck we were pretty low so it was nice to have a bit of luck back to make up for it in race two.”
In the frantic second race, HMS Racing opted for slicks, and the gamble paid off with a result of sixth position from 29th on the grid.
“The boys made that call, not me,” laughed Austin. “I didn’t want to do it, all credit goes to the boys at Duo.”
Austin has confidence in the HMS Racing squad ahead of the next round at Donington Park in three weeks, but believes the car needs to be developed before then to get the maximum out of it.
“We were on the podium in the last race last year, topped media day, we’re on the podium again here. We’re not doing a bad job.
“So we’ll keep doing it, we’ll hopefully be trying to squeeze in a test day and get some more development work done, I think it needs it.
“There’s a lot more potential, there’s a lot more to come from this car than we’ve shown so far.”