Josh Price says his first weekend in the TCR UK Series at Knockhill was ‘as good as it could have been’ after the Team BMR driver bounced back from an engine failure on Saturday to score a first podium on Sunday.
Price suffered an engine failure in Saturday practice on the new unit in his Honda Civic, requiring the team to change to a spare loaned from Pyro motorsport in the four hours between sessions before qualifying.
The team were able to complete the switch, giving Price the chance to qualify in fifth for race one, although he would start from the back for the first race due to neutralisation of Parc Fermé conditions ahead of the race.
Price took third in race one, before going even better in race two with second and at one stage leading the race before the in-form Dan Lloyd came through to take the win.
Price felt it had been a positive first weekend in TCR, having only previously completed a one day test, and praised his Team BMR mechanics for having worked tirelessly on Saturday to get him out on track.
“It’s as good as I think it could have been,” said Price to TouringCars.Net. “The boys put an engine in on Saturday within under three hours, which is a task in itself, and it’s the first time they’ve ever done it, so it’s not as if they’ve had practice.
“To think we were packing up to go home on Saturday, I think our results were as good as they were going to get.”
“We’re still learning, it was our first weekend with the car, and every session we go into we’re always going to learn more.”
The 19-year-old revealed that he was close to putting together a campaign to race in the TCR Europe series in 2018, before getting the chance to return to the British Touring Car Championship with Subaru.
“We were going to do Europe this year, before we got offered the drive with Subaru, so we bought the car to do that and then we changed the plans at the last minute. The car’s been sitting there unused, so it was rude not to use it for a weekend off.
“I’m sure we’ll be back in TCR UK or TCR Europe this year. It depends on sponsorship and what we do with Subaru in the BTCC.
“It depends on a number of factors and whether with BMR we’ve got the capability to produce the same results in TCR.”