Halfords Yuasa Racing’s Dan Cammish was left disappointed with seventh position for the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Silverstone despite extracting the maximum from his Honda Civic.
Cammish, who currently sits third in the championship standings just 11 points adrift of leader Colin Turkington, was second in both practice sessions before slipping to the fourth row in qualifying.
He told TouringCars.Net he “wants to beat himself up” but also admitted he couldn’t have extracted any more from his Team Dynamics-run FK8 Honda Civic Type R.
“I want to beat myself up because that’s my character, but at the end of the day there’s a few guys at the front there with zero weight,” said Cammish.
“This place has got four corners and three straights and I don’t think it was in it.
“Realistically, when you look at FP2 when I was P2 you could say I should be disappointed but actually, if I’d have done my FP2 lap then I’d still be sixth.
“So the speed goes up and I was already maxed out. That’s all I had today with that weight in.
“We had a slight imbalance with the car and maybe we didn’t get the toe-in bang on, but we’re talking fractions here.”
With the title in mind, Cammish believes he’s not in a bad position heading into tomorrow’s trio of races, but believes every point will be crucial heading forward in what will be a “tough” title fight over the remaining races.
“At the end of the day, well done to Jason on his pole. I’m at the right end of the grid,” he said.
“I’m sure [Andrew] Jordan is asking more searching questions than I am.
“I’m in a good place – I’m just behind Colin – I’d love to be 28 places ahead of Colin, but that’s not how it is.
“It’s tough, and every last bit is going to count. We’re going to dig deep, do some work overnight and make sure we come out giving it everything tomorrow and put ourselves in the best possible position.”
With team-mate Matt Neal heading the second row, Cammish was optimistic of the Civic’s pace around the 1.63-mile Silverstone National layout and feels he may be in a position to help in the later races tomorrow.
“It was great from Matt and that showed we had great performance and the car worked well.
“You look at the data and it’s just the weight, you can see where it hurts.
“Unfortunately I just couldn’t make it up today, no matter how much I wanted to.
“He can have a great day tomorrow and it’s nice to have a wingman at the front who can maybe influence things if we really need to.”
The opening race of the British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone is set to get underway at 12:00 BST tomorrow [29 September].