Rob Collard: aiming for wins

By Dave Brockman:

19 March 2004

Rob took the Independents' Championship last year despite many setbacks including having his car all but destroyed in a first-lap incident at Thruxton. The fighting spirit displayed by his close-knit team will serve him well this year as the challenge intensifies. Midway through the Donington test session we spoke to the defending champ:

Welcome back - looking forward to defending your title?

The BTCC is where I want to be and it should be a good season
Rob Collard

I'm definitely looking forward to it yes. The BTCC is where I want to be and it should be a good season. Obviously I was hoping to be a works driver but it hasn't happened so the next best thing is to run the Astra again and I think that will work out well.

There were all manner of rumours over the winter linking you with various teams - how close did you come to a works drive?

Up until about four days ago I was very very close with MG and with Vauxhall but I just couldn't raise the finance.

You're back with the Astra, but last year you were also hoping to run your Clio. Is that still on the cards?

Well we're hoping to do some Britcar rounds with it this year for customers, so we will be running it at some point but there's no definite plans at the moment.

You're taking a break while the team are working on your car - what's the problem with it?

At the moment they're just making some suspension adjustments in an attempt to improve the times. I've only done nine laps but I was 7th quickest when I came in which is ok.

There's some chassis adjustments too and we're also going to put some new tyres on which we haven't run before and I'm sure we can be about 5th or 6th .

The wind's changed since I set those times so it'll be difficult to improve but I think we will.

Obviously the aim is to defend your title but can you win any races on merit?

I hope so, the aim is to win some races overall. I think we should win some privateer races quite comfortably. I reckon Matt's going to be hard to beat but we should be able to win some races overall, that's the aim at least.