After successfully completing the opening free practice session of the new Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship without any issues, Colin Turkington admits he is happy with the initial showings from his brand-new Subaru Levorg.
There had been speculation in the weeks leading up to the season opener at Brands Hatch as to whether Team BMR would have the new Manufacturer models ready but, as expected by most in the paddock, they rolled out a quartet of machines last night for a shakedown session at the Kent venue.
In practice, Turkington clocked the 17th fastest time with a 49.133, but explained that the session, for him, was again little more than a shakedown to get an understanding of the car’s inner workings.
“That’s the first time my car has turned a wheel with the exception of last night” pointed out Turkington.
“So we just ran the session and tried to get a feeling of what the car is like, what it’s going to do.”
“I had no dramas out there, the car ran well, credit to the guys [Team BMR], that’s straight out of the box. We’ve got somewhere to work from now.”
Moving onto the second free practice session, which gets underway at 12:45, Turkington admits the development curve of the car from here is a bit of a grey area, but is confident that the engineering team at BMR can now tackle the problems with some running under their belts.
“It’s hard to determine how quickly we can move it forward, where we’re strong and where we’re weak – we don’t know that yet without having a trawl through the data. We know what the car does now so we can start to fix the problems.”
You can follow TouringCars.net’s live text commentary of the second practice session from 12:30.