Rob Collard admits that he thought he could catch Ash Sutton for the lead in the second British Touring Car Championship race at Oulton Park, where the BMW driver ultimately had to settle for second.
From fifth on the grid, Collard moved up to third with his initial get-away from the start line, before moving past team-mate Andrew Jordan for second on the fourth lap of the race.
The BMW driver then set about chasing down leader Ash Sutton, reducing his lead by over a second before the Subaru driver then extended his lead and cemented his position at the front.
“I thought I was going to get him,” said Collard to TouringCars.Net. “At one point I took a big chunk out of him, as he must have made a mistake. I thought it was game on, but the tyres seemed to come back to him a little bit, and he pushed on, drove really well and I just had to accept P2.”
Collard says that he had no answer to the pace of the Subaru in the second half of the lap, where the Levorg was able to pull away from the 1-Series under its engine power.
“The Subaru has got so much pace, it’s got a lot of power now. I could see where I catch him under braking and through the corners, but then you come out of the Knickerbrook chicane and up Clay Hill and he would just pull four car lengths on me going up the hill. They’ve definitely given it plenty of boost now, in my opinion.”
Collard’s third podium of the season moves him up to joint second in the championship standings and makes him the only driver to have finished every race inside the points in 2017.
“Every meeting this year we’ve had a podium, we’ve had a win and two seconds, so if we can just keep that going, scoring good consistent points is what we need for the championship.
“We came here last year with a very similar number of points, but the wheels fell off the wagon a little bit, as in race one and we got knocked off and again in race two.
“It really went a bit wrong at this time last year, but now it’s looking very strong. If we can just get a good solid points finish again in race three, and take points away from [Colin] Turkington and [Gordon] Shedden and people like that, it would be brilliant and just what we need.”