Jack Goff hindered by red flag in “disappointing” session

Jack Goff was disappointed with his first qualifying performance with Triple Eight Racing, despite only really managing to get one “clear run” at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit.

Goff took sixth on the grid for the opening round of the season, just 0.151 seconds behind the pole sitting BMW of Andy Priaulx, and 0.057 ahead of team-mate Andrew Jordan.

“Obviously both me and Andy want to be on the front row so neither of us are over the moon,” said Goff to TouringCarTimes. “I had a couple of issues, I had a big moment on my first set of tyres which I was lucky to escape, really. That could have been the end of my qualifying there and then so thankfully I kept it out the tyres.

“Second run on tyres the red flag came out on my best lap so that put an end to that set of tyres, so my last run was really my only run. To be within half a tenth of the front two rows isn’t too bad, we’re a tenth and a half off pole so we’re not a million miles away. We’re in the right end of the field at least.”

Goff was quietly confident of his chances in the first three rounds of the season, stating that although there had been minimal running of the car and not having a true idea of the car’s race pace, he feels he can still make up spots and move forward.

“We haven’t done much running in the car,” he added. “We’ve done about three days now so I’ll let you know tomorrow after race one how good our race pace is. We usually move forward in races so I’m quite optimistic, but I’m yet to do a proper race in an MG so it’s a bit unknown to me.

“I’ll be going to it with my eyes open a solid finish in the first race, hopefully a top ten, that should set us up nicely for the rest of the day. It’s a hard gird, anyone in the top 15 can win the race, it’s that close – we’ll be pushing hard and there’s a podium in it tomorrow, we’ll be looking for a podium definitely.”