Matt Neal believes the disparity in starting speeds between front and rear-wheel drive cars were to blame for his race one clash with Colin Turkington.
Neal, starting on the second row ahead of Turkington, came together with the BMW 125i M Sport in an attempt to move across and defend his position.
“What happened at the beginning of race one was just one of those things, caused by the difference in starting speed between the front and rear wheel-drive cars,” said Neal.
The ensuing damage left Neal with the broken front suspension on the Honda Civic Type R and Turkington with a broken rear-left towlink.
Though rear-wheel drive cars making strong starts has been an ongoing discussion over the last few seasons, the argument resurfaced at the weekend after Jason Plato’s rear-wheel drive Subaru Levorg GT also came together with Matt Simpson at the start of race two.
Neal paid tribute to the performance of his Type R in salvaging the rest of the weekend, with two further points finishes ensuring he leaves Brands Hatch 11th in the standings, thirty points adrift of team-mate and championship leader Gordon Shedden.
“We had a good recovery in race two, although the ultra-competitive nature of the BTCC means you’re only ever going to make up so many places,” explained the three-time champion.
“The final race was then a strong way to finish the day; the Civic Type R felt great and really well-balanced on the soft tyres, but I lost a bit too much time coming through in the opening stages and just ran out of laps to be able to launch an attack on the podium.”
That was a shame because we definitely had the pace for it, but there’s a long season ahead and the fact that ‘Flash’ and the team in general had such a cracking weekend proves what we’re capable of.”