ROCKINGHAM QUALIFYING REPORT

TURKINGTON BEST OF THE ‘HEAVY WEIGHTS’ AT A CLOSER THAN CLOSE ROCKINGHAM

Colin Turkington will start on the 6th row of the grid alongside BMW team mate Andrew Jordan in race 1 tomorrow. Clocking a time six hundredths faster than last year, the lap was good enough for P12 critically ahead of his main championship rivals. A mere one second covers the top 28 cars, producing another incredibly close BTCC qualifying session.

HEAVY WEIGHT

Qualifying with 66kgs success ballast plus the rear wheel drive 30kgs penalty, left Turkington with a mighty job on his hands if he wanted to make inroads on his practice session pace. Considerably the heaviest car on the grid he pulled out all the stops to qualify ahead of his main championship rivals in P12.

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FULL CLASSIFICATION

COLIN TURKINGTON

“This championship has become so close in performance that every tenth can make or break your weekend. One tenth down in that session would have put me back near P20, so in that respect I’m satisfied I got every last ounce of time out of the car.

I’ve been by far the heaviest car arriving at the last three meetings and this is having a serious impact on our qualifying pace. It’s frustrating in one respect because it has such a negative effect on our balance, but it is also pleasing to see the job that we can still do in such a competitive field.

Today we out qualified our rivals and that fills me with confidence.

I’ve learnt to look at being a heavy weight as a privilege rather than a pressure. You have to get your head down, focus on your own performance and deliver your own best.

The sixth row is not a bad place to start our day tomorrow and I’m confident the BMW will be a superior car on race pace than the front wheel drive cars. We’ll be keeping an eye on the weather forecast and working hard to improve the balance for another step forward.”

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