Colin Turkington said he feels more ‘confident’ in the West Surrey Racing BMW after the opening Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship meeting, despite software gremlins costing him at Brands Hatch.

The Northern Irishman enters the second meeting at Donington Park lying sixth in the standings, claiming the BMW 125i M Sport’s 100th BTCC podium in race one.

Turkington tailed winner Jack Goff for much of the race, but would be forced to play catch-up for the remainder of the day after problems before the start of the second race.

A software issue left him crawling to the pits on the formation lap, rectified quickly but costing Turkington a lap as he finished a ‘frustrated’ 27th.

“It’s been a normal BTCC weekend, with lots of highs and lows”, said Turkington.

“We scored well twice, with good results in races one and three, but race two was, of course, disappointing. I pressed every button and switch to reset the car but just needed to get myself back to the engineers.

“Those type of unforeseen gremlins creep into everyone’s campaign at some stage through the season. Ideally, you don’t want it to happen at the first round, but it has and we just have to put it behind us and move on.”

Recovering to ninth in the final race with fastest lap, Turkington was encouraged by the BMW’s performance at Brands Hatch and admitted to feeling more confidence behind the wheel.

“We leave Brands knowing we’ve done an excellent job in developing the package”, he added. “This is vital.”

“To be able to pass so many cars on the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit, and to set fastest lap on the prime tyre, shows that there is good pace in the car. We’ve been fast in all conditions and I feel more confidence in the car than I did in pre-season testing, when it was cooler and when we were on green circuits.

“Now we’ve got more ambient temperature and the car is responding very well, so I feel good confidence with the car going forward. As a driver, all you want is a race car that you can attack with, and that’s what we have.”