Aron Smith delighted with best qualifying at Knockhill

Motorbase Performance’s Aron Smith took his career best qualifying result at Knockhill and will start second on the grid, sandwiched by the two West Surrey Racing BMWs of Rob Collard and Tom Onslow-Cole.

Smith’s best lap came just after the red flag interruption, when the rain had begun to fall again, but the Irish driver was able to take advantage of the small window to jump from seventh to third on the grid. Smith’s previous best qualifying was at Thruxton, where he qualified in P7, where the conditions were also going from wet to dry.

“It’s literally a dream come true to be on the second row with the biggest names in the business,” said Smith to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve had a horrid time in the first half of the year with bad luck and a few little issues, so to hook it all up and show finally what we can do is brilliant.”

On whether Smith seems to prefer the wet conditions to the dry, Smith remarked:
“I’ve never been happy to see the rain, I’ve never been disappointed to see the rain, I just treat it all the same and see what happens. I guess it’s good for me now.”

“I never asked how I was getting on over the radio, I just drove it as fast as I could go, so I was on my in-lap and I asked whereabouts are we? And they said third and I nearly crashed the car.”

Smith also made his BTCC debut at Knockhill last year, in a one-off appearance in the Triple Eight Race Engineering Vauxhall Vectra, and believes that experience really helped him in qualifying today.

“It’s the first time I’ve returned to a track where I’ve previously raced in the touring cars, which is a bit of an advantage. You really have to hustle these cars, and I’ve been so used to the Clio where you drive it on your fingertips, so there’s quite a different style so that helped me to know where to push the car and where not to push the car.”