Team BMR ‘needs to improve in all areas’ according to Colin Turkington, who ended the first British Touring Car Championship practice session at Donington Park as the fastest of the Subaru quartet.
Having failed to pick up a single top ten finish in the season opener at Brands Hatch, all eyes are on the team for the second meeting of the season to see if fortunes will improve for the new Subaru-backed manufacturer team.
But Turkington, who was the best of the Levorg performers, was cautious about predicting any significant improvements at form at Donington Park.
“It’s probably difficult for everybody; the track temperature is low, the grips is low, so we’re just finding our feet really at the moment,” said Turkington to TouringCars.Net. “It’s one step at a time at the moment – we’re very much still learning and when you bring it to a different track you start from base again, so we’re just trying to get as many laps in as we can.”
“We haven’t been testing either. I’m a bit more comfortable in the seat, but we haven’t done too much since Brands.”
Turkington also alluded to the fact that his experience of rear-wheel drive machinery, having driven BMW cars for five of his 12 seasons in the BTCC, is probably helping him to maintain the upper hand over team-mates Jason Plato, Warren Scott and James Cole.
“I’m sure it helps, but I’m not doing anything massively better than them at the moment,” added the Northern Irishman. “We’re just all trying to work together to try and move the thing forwards, so I’m sure my more racing experience [in RWD] definitely helps.
“We have to work on all bits of the car. We have had no testing so we need to improve every department. There’s no one bit that we’re massively struggling with, we’re just trying to move the game on in every sense with the whole package – we’re working to improve it on every side.
“There’s still a lot of cars on the track out there, and Donington can be low grip as well, so it’s just a different set of challenges here.”