Rob Collard has admitted that he was questioning his own ability before securing his best results of the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship to date at
Croft.
Having secured a deal to return to the series full-time with Motorbase Performance, Collard headed to Croft having endured a difficult season so far – yielding just a single points finish in his
BMW 320si at Rockingham from the opening twelve races of the year.
With the team having struggled during the previous two rounds at
Donington Park and
Thruxton, Collard and team-mate Steven Kane travelled North looking for an upturn in fortunes at a circuit where the BMW ran well in the hands of Team RAC last season.
After qualifying in 14th place, Collard made the most of his experience to lie in fifth place when the opening race was red-flagged for a second time and he then climbed up into a podium position after three laps of race two after battling ahead of defending champion Fabrizio Giovanardi and with Gordon Shedden having gone off into the tyre wall at Tower.
Collard looked well set for a podium finish before he got out of shape exiting the chicane on lap 14 and lost position to a charging
Mat Jackson, eventually taking the flag in fourth place. Taking the start of race three from the second row, Collard blasted into the lead off the line and having been passed by Giovanardi for the lead on lap two he held second place until lap eight when contact from Adam Jones at Sunny In put him off line and he was collected by Mike Jordan while trying to get on track, damaging the front of his car and putting Collard into retirement.
“We started the weekend in positive form and qualifying wasn't bad, although we hoped to be higher up,” he told
Crash.net. “Race one was fantastic and I think experience counted there to keep the car on the island. It was hard to keep the car on track as the car was aquaplaning all over the place.
