REIGNING Green Flag British Touring Car champion James Thompson will spend today trying to work out where it all went wrong at Thruxton.

The York star went into the third round of the championship at the Bank Holiday weekend just two points adrift of Vauxhall team-mate Yvan Muller in the drivers' standings but left Thruxton a massive 20 points behind.

Frenchman Muller scored a double race win while Thompson had to make do with fourth and fifth places.

Thompson was downbeat after the second race and was concerned how Muller had made light work of his hefty weight penalty while he himself struggled so badly with less ballast.

He said: "To be honest, it wasn't the best weekend's racing for me and I'm not entirely sure what's wrong.

"I had the same set-up as the others (Muller and Paul O'Neill) but for whatever reason it didn't happen for me, and seemed to work the tyres extremely hard.

"To be so far off the pace compared to the other two and to be 40 kilos less doesn't really add up.

"It's so frustrating that it got worse during the weekend rather than better. We need to carefully review what happened and then move on to ensure a better performance at Silverstone."

Team-mate O'Neill took his tally of consecutive third places to four yesterday with another pair of consistent drives.

But the Warrington-based driver is not content with that and wants to move closer to the top of the podium.

O'Neill, who has won just one British touring car race in his career, said: "I am just so happy - I just don't want to finish a race off the podium now.

"The car performed exactly as I wanted it to, and was so consistent. I was racing hard but managed to keep my position."

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Updated: 11:04 Tuesday, May 27, 2003