Colin Turkington sung praise for Team BMR after all four Subaru Levorg machines enjoyed a drama-free opening Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship free practice session at Brands Hatch.
The double BTCC champion ended fastest of the Subaru quartet in 17th spot, just 0.903s off the pace of Tom Ingram who topped the times in first practice.
The Levorg GT enjoyed a combined 84 laps from BMR’s four drivers during the 40-minute session, James Cole finishing 25th overall, Jason Plato 27th and team boss Warren Scott last of the runners in 31st.
Limited to just 10 minutes of Friday running at the Kent circuit, Turkington said that Subaru’s performance on Saturday morning made for an encouraging start.
“That’s the first time my car’s properly turned a wheel with the exception of last night”, Turkington told The Checkered Flag after first practice.
“We just ran the session trying to get a feel of what the car is going to do and how to react.
“To be honest, the car ran well. A credit to the guys because, straight out of the blocks, we’ve got something to work for now.”
While reliability appeared no issue in the morning, Turkington admitted that as much track time as possible is important for the squad to discover areas for improvement.
“It’s just harder to determine how quickly we can move things forward”, Turkington added.
“Where we’re strong and where we’re weak; we don’t know any of that yet without having a trawl through the data. We can now start to fix the problems.”
The Northern Irishman also returns to a rear-wheel drive configuration he clinched his two BTCC titles with, something which he continued to get to grips with in first practice.
“It’s good, I enjoyed it”, Turkington said of the return to rear-wheel drive. “The car was quite a handful, but I enjoyed it.”
