After his departure from Team BMR, Colin Turkington has told TouringCars.net he thinks the two remaining vacant seats at former team West Surrey Racing are “worth a conversation” with a view to returning for next year’s British Touring Car Championship.
Turkington, who finished last season with the highest number of race victories and fourth in the championship despite a difficult start to the season amid teething problems for the new-for-2016 Subaru Levorg GT, parted company with Warren Scott’s outfit by mutual consent on Friday [13th January].
The Ulsterman has since been linked with a return to the BMW 125i M Sport package that delivered him a second BTCC title back in 2014.
Turkington is also conscious of the narrow time-frame left available to secure a competitive drive ahead of next year’s championship, with two-thirds of the field already provisionally confirmed.
“The problem with this stage of the year is the available competitive cars on the grid become less and less, so your opportunities narrow down.But that’s the number one goal – to put myself in the most competitive car, to give myself the best chance to win, so that’s the job really, over the next couple of weeks, is to try and pin something down which suits all parties and make sure that I can deliver to my own sponsors. It’s not going to be easy, but there are still opportunities there.” he explained.
Looking specifically at a return to WSR, Turkington admitted a conversation was there to be had, but also explained the need to look more broadly at other opportunities for next season.
“I’m not sure what their position is, obviously my news only broke [on Friday] – I need time to absorb that and see what the next step is but for sure it’ll be worth a conversation to see if there’s an opportunity.
“I need to take a broader look as well, I want to stay in the BTCC but you can’t afford to close too many doors and see what other options are out there.”
Despite the new sense of urgency if Turkington is to secure a championship-contending seat for next season, he explained the lack of pressure stems from adapting to the changing nature of putting motorsport deals together.
He also remains hopeful of confirming his plans in the next few weeks.
“I think it’s the landscape now of motorsport, it changes so quickly every year. You see a lot of musical chairs up and down the grid, people always jumping about and it didn’t use to be like that, sponsors coming and going, so the landscape changes very, very quickly and I guess you get used to that, you learn how to deal with it. But hopefully I can put something to bed in the next few weeks and focus fully on the racing and then I can focus on the racing from now until October until it all kicks off again!”