Turkington 'more than pleased' with P3

Team BMW's Colin Turkington says he's 'more than pleased' to launch his 2018 British Touring Car Championship assault from third on the grid after producing a strong qualifying performance at Brands Hatch.

The former two-time champion recovered from a water pump issue in second practice to qualify his West Surrey Racing prepared BMW 125i M Sport on the second row of the grid behind pole-sitter Jack Goff and Motorbase Performance's Sam Tordoff.

Having suffered technical issues during FP2, Turkington admitted he wasn't all that confident heading into the 30-minute qualifying shootout.

"I'm more than pleased," Turkington told Crash.net. "It's been a tough day through free practice with trying to get the car tuned. But we had the pace when it counted. I'm pleased to be towards the front and that's all you can do.

"I had a water pump issue in FP2. That cost us half the session and that's track time you don't want to be losing but the positive is that it happened in practice and not qualifying so we were still able to attack qualifying as normal.

"The car was feeling very difficult in free practice. I wasn't feeling that confident but we moved it in the right direction for qualifying. We'll work hard tonight and make sure we have a good race car."

Entering his second season back with West Surrey Racing, Turkington feels the factory BMW outfit now has a better understanding of the BMW 125i M Sport's engine and chassis combination as he seeks to avenge his narrow drivers' title defeat to Ashley Sutton.

"We know where we are with the engine and chassis combination. We're never done changing things engineering wise. We're always trying to improve. Sometimes you don't, it's just experience and knowledge.

"I think that showed today in qualifying. We were able to just put that setup on the car and do that time."