Colin Turkington admits Thruxton ‘just wasn’t meant to be’

Colin Turkington left Thruxton feeling frustrated at coming away with little to show for his efforts, after losing the lead of the British Touring Car Championship and only just managing one top ten finish.

Having qualified in eighth for race one, Turkington had hopes of making forward progress during Sunday’s races.

Unfortunately for the Northern Irishman, an electronic issue caused a misfire whilst he was running in sixth in race one, forcing him to make an unscheduled pitstop.

Dropping him to the rear of the field, Turkington failed to score any points and had to start race two from 24^th on the grid as a result.

From there, the reigning champion made up 11 places on the tricky-to-pass Thruxton circuit, but only salvaged a handful of points come the chequered flag.

Whilst Turkington made further progress in race three, he could only make up five further places to claim eighth and saw himself go from leading the points to being 16 adrift of new leader Ash Sutton.

“It’s always so important to finish race one; your entire day evolves from that result,” said Turkington. “When something happens then, it derails the weekend.

“Thruxton is a difficult circuit to overtake, and you have to force errors to make progress. It also tends to favour the FWD cars, so I was really up against it.

“You’re hoping to move forwards and maybe luck into the reversed grid for the final race, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Despite making up more places than anyone else in race two, the Team BMW driver admitted that he hadn’t moved as far forward as he would have hoped.

“It was critical for me to stop haemorrhaging points and I had to pull out all the stops. I’d have liked to make more progress to be honest, but when we took the weight out for race two, things didn’t come together as well as we would have liked.

“But all in all, we should be proud of having gone forwards because it was clear to see doing that wasn’t easy to achieve.

“The team kept their spirit and kept on digging deep throughout the day. And on the tough days, that is never more important.”

After losing the championship lead, Turkington accepted that having a bad weekend was just a ‘bump in the road’.

“You always expect a bump or two on the journey and this was one of them. These things happen and nobody is to blame.

“We just have to take it on the chin, dust ourselves down and go again.

“It’s frustrating when you put so much work into an event and you come away with little reward, but that work never goes to waste.

“We’ll move on, keep grafting and put it right next time out.”