Colin Turkington reminded everybody of why he is known as the British Touring Car Championship’s ‘King of Croft’ with a stunning pole position at the circuit for Team BMW and WSR on Saturday.
Less than two weeks since being involved in a major impact at Oulton Park, the four-time BTCC champion pushed himself and his BMW 330e M Sport to the limit to score his second pole position of the season.
All the more remarkable was that the Northern Irishman – who has scored a record 13 wins in the BTCC at the North Yorkshire venue – was driving a car built up around his 2019 title-winning chassis due to the damage sustained by his current shell last time out.
The rebuilding job was performed at WSR headquarters in under a week and ensured that Colin was able to set four successively faster laps during the final 10 minutes of qualifying and snare the 26th pole of his career – by 0.027 seconds.
“This is an incredible achievement for the team,” commented Dick Bennetts, Team Principal. “Everyone’s worked flat-out since Oulton Park to build up Colin’s car around his 2019 title-winning chassis and Colin’s pushed himself hard to regain the fitness to come here and race. Yes he’s always done well here, but even so, that effort was incredible. Jake’s had excellent pace too and I’m sure he can make up some positions tomorrow and Stephen has a good chance to do that too. We’ll be pulling out all the stops to win tomorrow.”
Colin and WSR stablemate Jake Hill had been nearly inseparable during practice, and the ROKiT MB Motorsport driver looked to have stolen an early march in qualifying as he held a top-five position throughout.
Like Colin, the Kent ace made small, but significant improvements during the final third of the session and qualified sixth at the circuit where he was a winner last year. It was his fourth top-six qualifying result from five rounds in 2022.
Oulton Park race winner Stephen Jelley, in the second Team BMW entry, ran competitive laps throughout practice, but suffered a major lock-up early in qualifying and flat-spotted his first set of tyres.
The Leicester racer – who scored his first BTCC podium triple at this circuit in 2009 – pushed hard to regain lost ground on his second set of tyres and had set a personal best first sector on what was set to be his final lap.
However, the session was red-flagged seconds later and not resumed due to their being less than one minute remaining, meaning any chance of improving on his 12th place on the grid – still only 0.4s away from pole – was removed.
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