Photo: PSP Images

Wrathall has his best weekend of the year at Snetterton

By

Toyota driver Frank Wrathall had a great weekend at Snetterton, grabbing his first career pole for Dynojet and chalked up three top ten results to move up to eighth in the Championship.

Wrathall’s weekend started with a surprise pole position, after the 25-year-old struggled in the practice session, 1.8 seconds off of Plato’s pace in FP2, but found two seconds out of his NGTC-specification car for qualifying to take pole position, with MG’s Jason Plato unable to respond.

Plato was able to get the better of Wrathall in race one however, passing him at the start as well as Dave Newsham in the Team ES Racing Vauxhall, but Wrathall reclaimed second position from Newsham later on and claimed a fifth in race two and a seventh place finish in race three, which saw him score enough points to move past Newsham in the championship standings for eighth.

“It’s been a brilliant weekend,” said Wrathall to TouringCarTimes. “It was such an achievement getting it on pole and race one was perfect. I think everyone upped their game a bit though, and the track changed a lot throughout the day, maybe we just lost a little bit of pace, but three solid results, I couldn’t ask for much more.”

Wrathall was caught up in controversy in race three, making contact with Championship leader Matt Neal’s Honda, which saw Wrathall drop to ninth and Neal all the way down to 20th spot. Wrathall recovered to seventh and Neal to ninth, with the stewards giving Wrathall a verbal warning for the incident.

“I went up the inside of him into the hairpin and we were side-by-side down the next straight; I gave him a lot of room down my inside, then he turned into the next left-hander like I wasn’t there,” said Wrathall. “I tried backing out of it once I realised he was coming across in front of me but it was too late by then.”

The Toyota Avensis was a strong car at the weekend, with Speedworks Motorsport also featuring at the front of the field with Adam Morgan qualifying in fifth place, and Wrathall topping the speed traps in qualifying with the X CTech R-built 2.0 litre turbocharged Toyota engine.

“We’ve made massive progress with the car and hopefully we can carry this momentum on and be this close for the remainder of the season,” added Wrathall. “It would have been a bit much for both (pole and my first win) to come at once, but if I could get a win before the end of the season I’ll be over the moon.”