Martin Byford is starting to become accustomed to the life of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship driver as he took to his third race weekend as the team headed to round eight of the season at Rockingham Motor Speedway.

The ex-Clio Cup racer, in the AmD Milltek Racing.com Volkswagen Golf, was looking to score his first points of his Touring Car career but that will have to wait as problems in race one and two meant that he would be on the back foot all weekend. After scoring his best qualifying position of the season, Byford was unable to capitalise from his 10th place starting position as contact on the opening laps of race one and two resulted in broken bonnet catches forcing the Essex-based driver to pit, finishing both races in 20th and 18th respectively.

Race three would be better for the 39-year old in which he passed a number of drivers including Caine, Shedden and Chilton to come home in 16th place. Speaking about his weekend, Byford said, “It was difficult to come back from what happened in race one,” he said. “Race two was equally frustrating given the pace we showed in the car and then in race three, I lost out when I got hit at turn two and it meant I was in a train of traffic throughout.”

“It’s a real shame because the car was really strong this weekend and in the final race, when I got ahead of Caine, I was able to pull away and make up places; it was nice to get ahead of someone like Tom Chilton before the end. Although we lost out a bit on the oval, we had genuine pace in the car and with a better result in race one, we would have been in the points.

The team will be looking for it’s first points since Donington Park as they head to their home circuit at Brands Hatch for round nice of the season.

Photo Credit: Chris Gurton

James Mappin is the editor-in-chief covering the British Touring Car Championship. You can contact him at james@btcccrazy.co.uk, on twitter @BTCCCrazy or on his personal twitter account @jamesmappin.