‘Difficult day’ for Colin Turkington in Thruxton qualifying

Colin Turkington endured a ‘difficult day’ in qualifying for the British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton, having put his BMW in tenth for the opening race of the day.

Turkington – who has never had a pole position at the Hampshire circuit – put his BMW on the fifth row of the grid, having failed to progress beyond Q2 and ending up over a second off pole position on Saturday.

However, the Northern Irishman has won at the UK’s fastest circuit four times before and hopes that some overnight set-up tweaks will enable him to push forward on race day.

“It’s been quite a difficult day with tenth in qualifying,” said Turkington, who had the second-fewest amount of hybrid boost for his lap at only three seconds. “It’s not too bad. I’d like to have been further up but generally I’ve had a challenge with getting where I needed to be to have the confidence to push on what’s quite a bumpy circuit.

“We’ll be doing a bit of extra homework to try and unlock some secrets that will let me move forward on Sunday.

“We don’t have a lot of hybrid to play with but if I can get the BMW into the top ten and benefit from the reversed grid then hopefully we can end race three on a high.”