Andy Priaulx “pleasantly surprised” with WSR Snetterton pace

Andy Priaulx was “pleasantly surprised” with his pace at Snetterton, placing his West Surrey Racing machine near the top of the time sheets in all three sessions.

Priaulx set the fastest lap in the final few moments of FP1, dropping to fifth in FP2 before finally taking sixth on the grid during the Team BMR-dominated qualifying.

“We knew BMR would be slippery and fast here,” Priaulx told TouringCarTimes. “What we’ve got is a pretty good package considering we knew we weren’t going to be the strongest car here. I’m pleasantly surprised with the pace of the car, seeing myself P1 this morning, with genuine pace on used tyres was very pleasing, we had a few issues in FP2.

“I had a scruffy qualifying, I had a bit of traffic in the last sector on both of my new tyre runs so I don’t think we squeezed the full potential out of the car, so for me that’s promising and I feel a little bit excited for tomorrow.”

Priaulx currently sits ninth in the championship standings after a pair of podium results at Croft, but the three-time world champion knows that similar results at Snetterton will require a lot of hard work.

“We’ve got to get the balance absolutely spot on,” said Priaulx. “It’s an awkward track and if you’ve got an imbalance in the car there’s a lot of car to carry around the track, there’s a lot of corners. Again I think if we can get our car in the sweet spot for the race setup then we should be very strong on the tyre deg. Front-wheel-drive cars aren’t really dropping anymore the tyres are so hard now, I think they’ll be OK also. I don’t think the race will come to us, but we have the pace to go out and have a go.”