Jake Hill delighted by strong Silverstone showing

Jake Hill say is hopeful of ending his first full season in the BTCC on a high on the back of a strong performance in the penultimate meeting of the year at Silverstone.

The Team HARD driver was one of the star performers in last weekend’s ninth round of the year, picking up a solid fifth place in race one and then running just outside the podium positions in race two before an unfortunate puncture dropped him down the order.

Despite that, the 22-year-old fought his way through the pack to score points from the back in race three and admitted he was delighted with the way the weekend had panned out.

“It’s been a rough spell for the team in recent events and we’ve had our fair share of bad luck,” he said. “Eighth in race three at Rockingham last time out was a good result for me, so I’m delighted that we’ve been able to come to Silverstone and put on a good show; it’s been a real boost.

“Race one went well and then in race two, I ran higher than I’ve ever run before in the BTCC and it was just unfortunate that we had a bit of contact that resulted in a puncture. Despite that, the car was strong in race three and it was good to come through and score points on perhaps our best weekend of the year.”

Hill added that much of his success was down to the gap between the cars running GPRM and RML parts being smaller at Silverstone thanks to the nature of the circuit.

“The difference between the two suspension set-ups has been getting bigger but it didn’t matter as much at Silverstone,” he said. “We can’t make changes like the RML cars can which affects us at technical circuits, but that isn’t the case at Silverstone and it made it more level. The Toyota is also quite slippery, which worked to our advantage.

“Hopefully we can have another good weekend when we get to Brands Hatch, and the fact it is the first circuit I’ll go to having previously driven an NGTC-spec car there will hopefully help.”