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BTCC

BTCC Rounds 13, 14 & 15

All the excitement from Croft, where waterlogged conditions made for some hair-raising action. Plus SEAT star Darren Turner gives us his view from the cockpit.

I can’t really think of many good things to say about this past weekend’s HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship rounds, except that I got my third pole position in the series. The rest of it was crap. JP and I only managed to salvage three points each from the weekend and had to watch the Vauxhalls romping away into the distance.

So let’s talk about the pole position then! We were quite surprised about our pace at the Croft track in Yorkshire. If you’d looked at the calendar and tried to tick off all the tracks we'd be good at, Croft wasn't one of them. We started the first practice with quite a bad car but the guys put us back on a more traditional, safer set-up for practice two and it worked much better.

It was a 30-minute qually session, but at the end of my first flying lap I went off and bounced over some gravel at the Clervaux corner which caused front splitter damage. As there wasn’t enough time to change it during the session, I had to sit it out in the garage and hope that no one managed to beat my time. Gordon Shedden had a really good go at it on his last lap but luckily we kept it at the top.

It was the first ever pole position for a diesel-engined car in the 50 years of the BTCC so that’s something to be proud of.

Sunday’s weather was unbelievably bad, and that affected the whole day’s results. 15th in the first race after aquaplaning off on standing water, 9th in the second with a mud-caked windscreen, and fired off by Mat Jackson in the third when I was going for some points…it was memorable but for all the wrong reasons. The rain was so bad they declared the first race finished after just two laps so we never stood a chance of making up any places. Ridiculous.

As soon as my feet have dried, I’m off to France for the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Aston Martin Racing. We won the GT1 class last year – also in torrential rain – so I’m hoping it will be a nice dry, hot one this time.

Darren Turner