Stephen Jelley had a tough weekend in the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton last time out, struggling with the balance of his machine and finding himself unable to make significant forward progress during race day.

Things started off on the back foot for the Leicestershire racer as he uncharacteristically went off track in the opening free practice session, doing some damage to his BMW 330i M Sport which his West Surrey Racing team did brilliantly to fix in time for the second session.

Into qualifying, Stephen was just 0.6s off the quickest lap time but, in such a closely fought series, found himself down in 15th position for the start of the opening contest the following morning.

From there it was a tough race day for the Team BMW man, but despite the struggles, he battled to finish inside the points in all three races.

“It was just a rubbish weekend,” commented Jelley. “We’ve got to go away and analyse it because obviously, Tom [Oliphant]’s had a good weekend, Colin [Turkington]’s managed to get a podium out of race three with the reverse grid, so there are some positives team-wise.

“I got stuck behind various cars really and wasn’t able to do a lot about it. We tried to make something work but it’s just so hard to cut through when you lose the front of the car once you get up close behind people.

“We scored more points here than we did last time we came here so that’s the only positive. Going away from here, all the other circuits are very similar to the ones we’ve had success at at the last few meetings. Croft should be good.”