Halfords Yuasa Racing’s Dan Cammish believes ‘there’s no point kicking yourself’ after he lost out to Tom Ingram at the start of the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Thruxton.
The 2019 runner-up qualified on pole position for race one but explained that he could not see the lights as his Honda Civic sat under the main lighting gantry, forcing him to rely on the repeater lights and giving some context to his inferior getaway.
Once race winner Ingram got ahead, Cammish immediately set about pressurising the Toyota Corolla, but ultimately would be forced to settle for second despite mounting his closest attack on the final tour of the 2.4-mile Hampshire circuit.
“There’s no point kicking yourself, it’s done isn’t it? If I’d have been in 15th I’d have given myself a hard time, but it’s a funny one because weirdly at Thruxton you can’t see the start lights, you actually start under the gantry, and you can’t see the,” Cammish told ITV.
“I had to go off the repeater lights on the left-hand side which to be honest I just didn’t trust – I don’t want to make a jump start, I don’t want to make a mistake so I was really focussed on making sure that they were definitely out and there was going to be no issue.
“And to be honest it just wasn’t a good enough start from my point. Whether or not we’d have had enough ultimately enough to beat Tom – hard to say – he was very very quick.
“He was pushing hard, he had quite a few moments and I thought one of them would eventually bite him, especially if I kept pushing him hard enough. We could drive quite a bit neater in certain places and weren’t really under the same stress.
“But he held onto it, no matter how much I was just hoping that eventually it’d just drag him onto the dirt and that’d be it. We got close!
Cammish continued to note that he felt the setup changes made to his Team Dynamics-run FK8 Honda Civic may have worked for one-lap pace during qualifying, but were less suitable for race runs with the large levels of degradation at the notoriously abrasive circuit.
“I think some of the changes we made for qualifying worked when the tyre was brand new, I’m not sure they work now we’re up and running as the tyre degrades I can’t use what I had,” Cammish explained.
“I think we can go away and change it and go better again, I don’t know where. It seemed like we were quite a long way ahead of third so clearly Tom and I had some good performance.
“Of course it’s disappointing to start on pole and not win the race, but it’s great points and we go again for the next one.”
The second race of the British Touring Car Championship from Thruxton is scheduled to get underway at 14:35 BST.