Colin Turkington admitted that understeer limited his performance at Thruxton, but a trio of top-seven finishes kept him just eight points from the series lead as the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship heads to Oulton Park.

The reigning champion qualified ninth on the grid and improved to results of seventh, fifth and fourth across Sunday’s encounters in Hampshire, the BMR Racing driver admitting that initial understeer problems kept him a few tenths shy of the outright pace.

“It has been a learning weekend really”, Turkington told The Checkered Flag after the Hampshire visit. “We’ve probably been a couple of tenths shy of the ultimate pace this weekend really, but we’ve improved the car and then got faster as the day went on.

“I had a bit of understeer all weekend which we have improved, but that’s where the extra bit of time was lacking.”

Turkington’s consistency means that he will again carry 66kg of penalty ballast into qualifying for next month’s visit to Oulton Park on 6/7 June, something the Volkswagen CC racer felt limited him to ninth place on the grid at Thruxton.

“Qualifying further down the grid makes the weekend tricky”, added the Northern Irishman. “We came in with a lot of ballast in the car so I had to obviously deal with that.

“It’s the nature of this championship though – if you don’t have the ultimate speed then you need to get out there and score some good points regardless.”

Still lying second in championship, eight points adrift of leader Shedden, BMR Racing’s Turkington next heads to an Oulton Park circuit he claimed pole position and two wins at last season. Already a winner for BMR in 2015, Turkington hopes for a stronger performance at the Cheshire circuit.

He concluded: “Hopefully [at Oulton Park] we will go there with a stronger package. At Donington we were fast straight out of the blocks while here, it didn’t quite happen.

“I know that there are stronger tracks for me to come.”