Turkington 'more than pleased' with 'excellent' qualifying

Team BMW's Colin Turkington is aiming to get his 2018 British Touring Car Championship challenge back on track after qualifying for tomorrow's opening Thruxton race in second.

The two-time champion has suffered an indifferent start to the season after a catalogue of ill-fortune has left him sitting tenth in the points standings, 40-points off championship leader Tom Ingram.

However, Turkington secured his best qualifying position of the year so far with a front-row result during today's 30-minute shootout.

Having set his best time without the assistance of a tow around the fastest circuit on the BTCC calendar, Turkington felt his 1 minute 15.847s effort was the maximum his BMW 125i M Sport had offer.

"I’m really pleased with P2," Turkington told Crash.net. "I would have taken anywhere in the first two or three rows. We went under the pole position record time with a 15.8. That was the most that we had in our car today.

"We had no tow in the slipstream. To pull that sort of time out was excellent. I’m more than pleased. The car’s handling has been great all weekend. I’m going to bed confident and content.

"The test that we had a month ago has put us in the right direction and we came out of the blocks fast in FP1, and we were able to improve on that.

"We haven’t had the rub of the green yet this season but we’re just trying to keep working hard and hopefully score some steady points tomorrow."

With the weather and track conditions considerably warmer than Brands Hatch and Donington Park, Turkington is hopeful the conditions should play to BMW's favour during the three races.

"It’s important to do the lap when the car is going well. We need to start scoring points. With the warm conditions, it might play to our favour. Lots to look forward to tomorrow," Turkington continued.

"You don’t quite know what to expect over the 16 laps around here. I’m quite confident with what we’ve got in our car. I’m just going to try and get a clean getaway and score points well over the three races."