ROB Austin underlined Handy Motorsport’s clear potential for the new British Touring Car Championship season with an outstanding performance during officially timed testing at Donington Park on Thursday.

Joining 29 of the other competitors confirmed for this year’s BTCC, which gets underway at Brands Hatch in Kent two weeks from now, Austin worked conscientiously through the Swindon team’s planned programme and the end result was the second-fastest confirmed pre-season pace.

At the wheel of his striking Toyota Avensis, the 36-year-old posted a best lap of one minute and 10.109 seconds, which placed him a mere 0.1 seconds shy of the top spot on the timesheets.

“Donington has been a good indicator, but it’s by no means the full picture,” said Austin.

“We were confident we had good pace in the car and the test proved it.

“But I know there’s no way all of the works Hondas, Subarus and BMWs will be outside the top 10 come Brands, as they were at Media Day.

“Our plan was to just go about our test programme as though nobody was watching and at the end of the day, see how we stacked up.

“To be P2 was a pleasant surprise considering I had made such a mess of our new tyre run. We had actually set our fastest time of the day on old tyres, so there was plenty left on the table.”

As ever during the annual pre-season launch at Donington, competitors took to the track in the afternoon for the only collective test ahead of the opening race weekend next month.

With just a couple of red flag stoppages during the test, when rival cars needed to be retrieved following incidents, a largely unbroken four-hour block of testing gave Handy the opportunity to undertake a lot of mileage where race set-up was the paramount consideration.

Team principal Simon Belcher said: “We ran the hard tyres mostly, did a lot of laps on those, and only did one new tyre run, so to be P2; we’re happy with that.

“There are no prizes for the test day, it’s in a couple of weeks where that counts.”

While mindful the pecking order at the end of Media Day won’t necessarily translate to the eventual order at Brands Hatch at the start of April, Austin says he is very confident his car has the capability to qualify.

“I’ll try to qualify on pole, of course, but this is an extremely competitive year and cannot be underestimated, so I will be happy as long as we can qualify in the top 10,” he said.

“We’ve developed a strong race car and I believe that if we can start in the top 10 on the Saturday, then we will be set for an exciting Sunday.”