Aiden Moffatt concluded his best-ever season in the British Touring Car Championship with another victory at Brands Hatch, but the Scot felt that he was robbed of another podium finish in race two.
Moffat followed up a career-best qualifying effort on Saturday, when he put his Mercedes in second on the grid, with a dominant win in race one as he led the race from lights-to-flag.
However, race two saw the Laser Tools Racing driver knocked out of the lead by charging championship contender Colin Turkington, dropping him to fifth and denying him a possible double podium result.
The final race of the day proved to be a challenging one for the 21-year-old, who struggled to 14th overall, having started in sixth on a circuit in changeable conditions.
The race two result left Moffat feeling frustrated after a season of highs and lows, in which the Scot took two wins and his best-ever championship classification despite scoring slightly fewer points than in 2016.
“It’s brilliant to get a win,” said Moffat to TouringCars.Net, “but I think we could have got another podium in race two, but it wasn’t meant to be. What’s happened has happened.
“In race three we just struggled with the car and I was just driving around waiting for it to end!”
Whilst Moffat was frustrated to have been knocked out of the lead by Turkington, he took a balanced view on the penalty handed out.
“From how it felt to me, I’m surprised there wasn’t a points [deduction] or a position swap, however I haven’t seen it since, so I can’t be 100% sure.
“At the end of the day the championship has gone to the wire without [a penalty] so I think that’s always a good thing in touring cars; you want there to be a close battle for the fans.
“I think something more would have been expected, but it’s hard. To me, the damage was done and I don’t care if he got 100 points or 0 points [deduction], £1,000 or £0 [fine]. At the end of the day I went from being forced out of a minimum of a podium result, to fifth, and that’s all that matters to me.”
Moffat described his season as being one of ‘highs and lows’ – having maintained a consistent run of 14 points finishes at the end of 2016, culminating in a podium, Moffat had more non-scores and inconsistent finishes in 2017, despite his two victories.
“There’s been big highs into big lows and I’ve bounced back and done all I can. It’s been a frustrating year, but we’ve got two wins and it’s hard to complain about that.”