WSR and BMW qualified on the second row of the British Touring Car Championship grid in a closely-contested session at the UK’s fastest circuit, Thruxton, on Saturday.
ROKiT MB Motorsport’s Jake Hill continued his excellent recent run of form to put his BMW 330e M Sport third on the grid; a result that gives him a chance to close-in significantly on the lead of the championship on Sunday.
“Thruxton has always been a circuit where the front-wheel-drive cars have an advantage in qualifying, so we weren’t expecting to be on pole, but Jake’s proven the pace of the BMW today and done a very good job,” commented Dick Bennetts, Team Principal. “The BMW is always a strong racecar, so tomorrow, where it’s what you do over 16 laps rather than one that counts, we should be in good shape. We’ll look carefully at what happened in qualifying for both Colin (Turkington) and Stephen (Jelley) and make sure both are in a position to make some big gains tomorrow.”
The Kent racer, who lies third in the standings, had been the fastest of the three WSR drivers in both practice sessions at the Hampshire track and set a blistering pace on his first flying lap of the 30-minute qualifying session to secure the result.
Impressively, it was his seventh top-six result of the eight qualifying sessions held in 2022.
Stablemate Colin Turkington, the championship leader, endured a frustrating session, which was disrupted early on when the presence of a rival car in the middle of the track caused him to go off at the Complex early on.
The Team BMW driver – whose status as points leader means he was not allowed to use any of the series additional hybrid power in the session – rebounded with his fastest time of the session with just 90 seconds remaining; a lap good enough for 15th place on the grid.
Team-mate Stephen Jelley was one place behind and only four thousandths of a second adrift of Colin.
The Leicester racer had been a top-six runner in practice and is optimistic of adding three more strong points finishes on Saturday, which will be crucial to Team BMW’s hopes of increasing its Teams’ Championship lead.
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