Stephen Jelley ‘thought the win was on’ in race three

Team BMW’s Stephen Jelley admits that he ‘thought the win was on’ in the final British Touring Car Championship race at Knockhill, where instead he finished in third.

Having earlier claimed two points finishes with 11^th and ninth in races one and two respectively, Jelley was then drawn onto the reversed-grid pole position for race three when the top nine finishers from race two were reversed.

The Leicestershire racer made a clean start to lead from the off, but had his advantage wiped out due to an early safety car intervention to recover the stricken car of Josh Cook.

Initially seeing off the challenge from Jason Plato, Jelley was soon defending hard from the charging Tom Ingram, who had worked his way up to second behind the WSR driver.

With Ingram running the favourable softer compound tyre in the final race, Jelley came under intense pressure until on lap 17 the Hyundai driver made a late lunge for the lead at the hairpin.

Jelley lost two places with the move, as he was forced wide, allowing Senna Proctor to take second. Thereafter he was unable to regain lost ground and had to settle for third, his second podium finish of the season.

Earlier in the weekend, Jelley believed he had a brake issue, which he ultimately put down to his relative lack of experience in the BMW 330i M Sport car.

“In qualifying I struggled with my brakes,” explained Jelley. “I don’t know whether I think I’m learning still, which sounds a bit odd, with what the car likes regarding warming up the front tyres and warming up the brakes.

“With the cooler conditions I’ve got caught out and hit the brakes on my first flyer and had a massive lock up, just because I’ve got the temperatures of the fronts all out of whack and caused myself a big problem on the first set of tyres, then couldn’t quite figure out what the issue was.

“In my head I thought ‘I’ve got some sort of brake problems’, so we came in, give it a good check over, went back out on the second set, did a lap that put me 14^th, but I sort of pegged back my braking areas and wasn’t on the attack, so I was conservative and that cost a couple of tenths.

“That would have put us up right inside the top ten, so I was a bit disappointed.”

Explaining his race day, Jelley emphasised his desire to stay out of trouble, as he prioritised points-scoring finishes at the Scottish circuit.

“In race one we basically kept out of trouble; I kept my nose clean, and made a few places up. It’s so hard to overtake around here, and so easy for something bad to happen, so I was trying to be sensible in the first two races.

“I got one good opportunity to get past Rory Butcher at the chicane during race two, which I did, and then on the run down to the hairpin, I left the door open, and he had a massive lunge.

“I thought ‘he’s got me here, if I turn in, I’m gone.’ I had to sort of concede, let him have it, and Plato got through as well, so I lost two positions, and then got into the battle with that train of cars.

“I just hung off the back of it because everything was looking a bit feisty. We were in the reverse grid places, then two cars binned it, so we finished ninth.”

The 39-year-old admitted he was disappointed to miss out on a victory in race three, to add to his total of three BTCC wins to-date.

“I thought the win was on in race three. I thought I managed it quite well and apparently a lot of the cars around me were on the soft tyre and I was on the medium.

“I was very aware that we were open to a big move at the hairpin and get tapped and spun around and all that, so I was quite defensive, but held it quite well.

“Then Tom made quite a robust move which I turned out of, because I saw him coming and I wanted to try and make it work.

“I didn’t take the apex, but he muscled me out of the way and it was a shame that Proctor was so close behind him as well. Third is good, but a win would have been nice.”