Robb Holland is not going to take part in this weekend’s British Touring Car Championship races at Thruxton due to the damage from the high-speed accident at Donington Park.

“The team should be really proud of themselves. They worked at 100mph and had many sleepless nights just to get the car ready for round one at Brands Hatch and it has run perfectly from lap one. We made a collective decision not to overload on spares until finalising our planned upgrades programme after Thruxton, so the timing of the accident makes things really difficult to take,” said Holland to btcc.net.

The Rotek Racing driver made contact with James Cole’s Toyota Avensis which saw both cars going off into the barriers. The focus for the team is to get the Audi S3 ready for the races at Oulton Park instead.

“It was a racing incident – two seconds earlier or later and it would never have happened but that’s racing of course. We thought we’d be able to turn it around quite quickly but the damage was worse than we first thought and then parts and timing immediately became an issue. We’re all really disappointed to miss Thruxton but it’s just one of those things and we need to focus on the positives and that’s working on the upgrades and our planned test programme prior to Oulton Park,” said Holland.