Collard’s BTCC Silverstone success “feels amazing”

September 17, 2018 0 Comments

In only his third Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship race meeting, Ricky Collard finished inside the top 10 in all three races at Silverstone – including a maiden podium finish in Race 1.

Ricky – who wears a Stilo ST5 F 8860 helmet, fitted with a short visor and a top air system all supplied by Nicky Grist Motorsports – qualified a career-best second for the first race in his WSR-run BMW 125i M Sport. The 22-year old from Eversley in Hampshire was then among the front-runners throughout the race and took the chequered flag in third place.

He added an equally-impressive fourth in Race 2, despite his Team BMW car carrying 57kg success ballast, and added 10th in Race 3 on the hard ‘option’ tyre to claim the Jack Sears Trophy as the highest-scoring rookie of the weekend.

“If you’d told me I’d be leaving here with my first podium, three top-ten finishes and the Jack Sears Trophy, I’d have taken it straight away, so to actually do it on track, in a series as closely-fought as the BTCC, feels amazing,” said Ricky. “Even better, the results Colin [Turkington] and I have scored today put us in a strong position in the Teams’ Championship. I can’t praise the team highly enough. I’ve had to learn them and they’ve had to learn me, but it’s only taken three weekends to achieve this, and I don’t think that could have happened with any other team in this paddock. I’m just so happy right now.”