BTCC

Colin Turkington: BMW Will Be Strong At Croft

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Current British Touring Car Championship points leader Colin Turkington says that consistency is the key as he heads to a Croft circuit that has brought him and his West Surrey Racing team plenty of success in the past.

The 2009 BTCC champion heads into the North Yorkshire venue leading the championship by nine points over Honda’s Gordon Shedden after a stellar fourth meeting at Oulton Park, where pole position set him up for two wins and a third place to leap to the head of the standings.

Croft stats 4 (BMW from 2007)It is the first time that the Northern Irishman has topped the points since he won the title, and he says it is a position he intends to consolidate at Croft this weekend.

An eight-time winner at Croft, Turkington told The Checkered Flag: “Oulton Park was obviously very good for us so we’re going into this weekend with a positive attitude. Croft is a track I enjoy and have had a lot of success with the team at over the years so hopefully it will be a strong weekend.

“We’ve got to just see how it goes really and we’ll try and keep it consistent and get some good points on the board.”

Turkington has in fact taken all of BMW’s seven wins at Croft since 2007, and taken victory in races one and two in all of his last three visits to the North East venue including narrowly missing out on the treble at the same circuit a year ago.

The Northern Irishman praised the development work gone into the BMW 125i in its second season as he holds a season-topping four wins so far in 2014, singling out Croft’s slow corners as the area where the team should gain time on their rivals.

Turkington won twice here last year (Photo: btcc.net)

Turkington won twice here last year (Photo: btcc.net)

“Our car is very strong in the low-speed corners where we have a lot of traction”, he added,and obviously there are quite a few of those at Croft which could be why we were so quick there last year.”

After several rivals including Triple Eight spoke out regarding the pace and start capabilities of the BMWs at Oulton Park, a longer first gear has been enforced by TOCA to the rear-wheel drive cars of WSR and also Rob Austin Racing‘s Audi A4s for Croft onwards.

Turkington felt that this will not disadvantage the team unfairly however, saying:  “The cars have now got a longer first gear ratio than what we had, but I don’t think it’s a significant issue.”It’s a change but it’s not a massive one really and it shouldn’t affect us that much to be honest.”

Qualifying at Croft gets underway this Saturday at 15:45, while Sunday’s trio of BTCC races take place at 12:02, 14:39 and 17:06 respectively for the fifth meeting of the season.

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