Fastest time at Thruxton

Following the success of the first meeting of the year at Brands Hatch, Thursday April 4th saw Rob and the Collard Racing team spend the afternoon at the Thruxton circuit in Hampshire, for an official Toca test session. The circuit, not far from the team's base, is the fastest on the BTCC calendar, and will play host to rounds 5 & 6 of the championship in May.

The test session took place solely in the afternoon, and there was a relatively low turn-out in terms of teams in both classes, as a result of the fierce racing action at Brands Hatch at the weekend. However the production class sprint race winner from Brands, Norman Simon, and his team-mate were there in their Edenbridge BMWs, as was Annie Templeton (Techspeed Peugeot 306), and Alan Blencowe and Graham Saunders (GA Motorsport Alfa Romeo 15.6s).

Rob and the team soon picked up where they left off at Brands, setting a benchmark time early on in the session. The Renault Clio performed well throughout the session, and for much of it, was just under two seconds quicker than Simon in second place. Rob ended the day as the quickest in the class, lapping in a time of 1:23.433. Simon's best time of the day was 1:24.100, putting Rob more than 0.5 seconds quicker over the course of a lap.

The fast corners of the Thruxton circuit are notoriously hard on tyres, and this was eveident during the test session. Rob suffered two blow-outs of his front left tyre at the fast 'Church' corner. He was lucky to escape with very little damage to the car, but the team did remove a large quantity of grass from the car after the second of these high-speed offs.

Overall the day was very successful for the team. No major problems with the car, and significantly outpacing the opposition. With more development due before the next meeting at Oulton Park, the season is looking very bright for the Collard Racing team.