SWINDON’S Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship team, Handy Motorsport, experienced one of its more frustrating outings of the 2016 season at Rockingham at the weekend, with a highlight result of 14th position overall in the second of Sunday’s three races.

Delivering superb top-five pace at the wheel of the Toyota Avensis in practice on Saturday, driver Rob Austin looked set to continue the team’s excellent run of form.

But a grid penalty for qualifying, a result of an incident at Knockhill a fortnight earlier, hindered the squad’s hopes.

Forced to start round 22 from the back of the 31-car grid, Austin fought his way into 20th place, despite running the slower hard compound tyre in the opening contest.

He then raced strongly to 14th place in round 23 but hopes of a top-10 challenge in round 24 went awry after the Avensis was shunted off the track on lap one. Although recovering, Austin eventually retired after more contact.

Team principal Simon Belcher said: “Our plan was to go for 15th in the first race from the back, 10th in race two and then try and be in the mix for race three – but it obviously didn’t work out that way.

“The hard tyre was horrendous in race one and gave the car lots of micro vibrations, which caused a lot of oversteer, so that didn’t help our plan, to be honest.

“Rob did all he could, though, and he raced well. We know the car was good again this weekend, the pace in practice two proved that, but the end results didn’t meet our expectations.

“Having said that, even with the race three retirement, it wasn’t a complete disaster either and we’re all determined to hit back at Silverstone in a few weeks.”

Silverstone’s National Circuit will host the penultimate race meeting of the Championship season over the weekend of September 17-18.