Colin Turkington and his eBay Motors team experienced a disastrous opening British Touring Car race at Brands Hatch, as all three team-mates made contact on the opening lap and the Northern Irishman dropped out of title contention.
Turkington had been in with an outside shot at the title heading in to the weekend, 48 points adrift of series leader Andrew Jordan.
However his title chances came crashing to a halt at the first corner of the opening race, as contact with team-mate Rob Collard ahead caused him to spin in front of the pack. That left an unsighted Nick Foster nowhere to go, and the two BMW’s ended up crashing head-on.
“The contact at Paddock Hill on lap one spun my car and then I got collected by Nick who was unsighted,” explained Turkington to TouringCars.Net. “That was me out on the spot – there was too much damage to the front-end.”
“It was contact with Rob that spun my car around. It’s a difficult day when three cars collide in one corner from the same time. But it’s done now.”
Turkington added that his team face a race against time to ready the two cars for race two, with damage to the front-end of both the BMWs.
“The guys have a job on to fix it – because obviously both cars have similar damage. It’s a case of parts and time so hopefully if it all runs smoothly. But we should be back out again.”
As Turkington did not even complete the first lap he admits that he will be on the back-foot starting race two from the back of the grid, having not completed a full corner at racing speed in the wet this weekend.
“I really don’t know what it’s like because I only did one corner,” added Turkington. “I’m starting my first race and everybody else is in their second, so we’ll have to do our best.
“I’m just thinking about getting home tonight, to be honest. We’ll just have to see how it goes and try to get to the finish. The goal today was to try and finish all three races. On days like these it’s a race of attrition generally. I’ve got no major plans now, really.”