Photo: PSP Images

Frank Wrathall takes best NGTC qualifying of the year

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Dynojet Racing’s Frank Wrathall took his best career qualifying at Snetterton today and the best for the British Touring Car Championship’s new NGTC platform with a stellar lap, less than four-tenths off Jason Plato’s pole time.

The 24-year-old from Garstang clocked a best time of 1:59.084, matching that of the Arena Motorsport Ford Focus of Tom Chilton to grab seventh on the grid for the first race on Sunday.

“I knew that the car was capable,” said Wrathall to TouringCarTimes. “It is a surprise to be seventh. I think realistically I’ve always known that we’ve got the potential. It’s more satisfying more than anything to finally deliver that potential.”

The closest full NGTC car to Wrathall’s Toyota was that of Rob Austin, a not too distant 14th, with Daniel Welch’s new Proton Gen-2 in 20th and the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis in 24th.

Three different engine combinations power the four NGTC cars on the grid, with the Welch Proton and Speedworks Toyota powered by the Swindon developed control engine, with Rob Austin’s Audi powered by the Lehmann 2.0 litre turbo and Wrathall a Toyota based turbo-engine built by X CTech R.

“We’ve been continuing the development the engine, and the chassis. It’s the only Toyota engine of that model that’s been done so we’ve been improving the engine all the time and also the installation of the engne and everything around the engine bay.”

“Reliability was our first thing, we seem to have overcome all the gremlins we’ve had and then over the break we’ve been able to concentrate on getting some speed out of the car which clearly we have done.”

Wrathall will be starting next to a different bunch of drivers than he’s been used to, with his best position so far 17th last time out at Croft.

“I know the further up the grid you start, the better drivers should be around you – so to sorrt of get away from the cars at the back and start mixing it with the quality at the front, that’s what we’ve been desperate to do some hopefully we can mix it with them in the race.”