Colin Turkington admits he ‘wasn’t confident’ of race three win on the grid

Colin Turkington has admitted that he ‘wasn’t confident’ of necessarily bagging victory in the final British Touring Car Championship race at Croft, even though the BMW driver started from pole position.

Turkington was randomly drawn onto the reverse-grid pole for race three, with the Honda of Gordon Shedden alongside.

Even though Shedden challenged Turkington at the start of the race, the Northern Irishman was soon able to open up an advantage at the head of the pack as Shedden defended hard from points leader Ash Sutton.

Despite having 12 wins at Croft to his name heading into the event, Turkington was not particularly confident about securing a 13^th on Sunday.

“The King of Croft lives on for one more year,” joked Turkington. “I hear it so much now, so why not use it!

“A win is a great way to end my day. Even sitting on the grid in P1 when it was looking good and I wasn’t confident that we could do that, because you never know the pace in the car or the handling in the car.

“But once I got through the first laps I knew the car was better than I had had all day.”

Turkington has moved up to third in the drivers’ standings as a result of his win and fourth and seventh place finishes in races one and two respectively, but he says he is not too concerned about the additional success ballast he’ll have to carry into next weekend’s races at Silverstone.

“I could see Ash was behind Gordon and probably not wanting to take too much risk, so I got my head down.

“I would take a look every time coming out of the hairpin, and I’d still see a black car in front of a blue car, so I was quite pleased about that!

“I really enjoyed that; as I’ve said many times, Croft is a great circuit to drive and especially when the 3 Series is in a sweet spot it’s a pure delight.

“A big credit to Team BMW – they had a lot of work to do between race two and race three and it’s paid off.

“It’s good points and it’s obviously great to get a win. Whatever weight I have to carry at Silverstone I have to carry. We’ll just plan our strategy accordingly.

“I think we’re all going to enjoy this win tonight – it was hard earned from race one, race two we were in the wars and nearly didn’t survive, so it’s great to convert it.”