Colin Turkington admits that he’d used up all of his ‘trump cards’ in the third British Touring Car Championship race at Rockingham, which saw the Subaru driver progress from 15th on the grid to take third.
Turkington made rapid progress in the race, getting himself up to the fringes of the top ten at one third distance, before then going on to make up four positions over three laps between the second and third safety car periods.
The Northern Irishman admits that he did then think about the possibility of then going on to pass Árón Smith and Gordon Shedden for the lead of the race.
“I was maximising everything I had; from the start I was trying to get out of the middle of the pack as quickly as I could,” said Turkington to TouringCars.Net. “It’s easy to get stuck there for the whole race, so I was really leaning on the car.
“I was able to pick somebody off each lap, but as I got further to the front it became more difficult to pass, especially the medium tyre runners. By the final safety car I was on the back of Gordon, but he was on a medium tyre as well, so I’d used all my trump cards to get to third.
“I still had good pace, but not enough to try and challenge for the win. When you’ve come that far you think it would be awesome to win it, but I just didn’t have enough left.
“It probably would have taken Gordon and Árón to have a bit of a ding-dong and me to slip through to realistically win it, and I don’t think Gordon had enough left to really attack Árón, so it was about maximising what I had.”
Turkington believes that he is still has an outside shot at the overall drivers’ championship, despite being 48 points behind leader Sam Tordoff.
“We’re still very much on the outside [of the title fight], I’m still 48 points back, but we’re still in the mix. I remember a couple of years ago going to Brands Hatch leading by 49 points, so it’s never over until it’s over. It’s more open this year than ever.
“At this stage of the season the BMWs are very fast. That’s clear from today, and they’re good everywhere. We’ll just have to keep trying and maximising all that we have.”