West Surrey Racing enjoy strong qualifying performance at Knockhill

West Surrey Racing were delighted with their performances in qualifying, although at times it seemed like the team were firmly on the back foot during the thirty minute session.

Free practice saw the three BMW 125i M-Sports threaten the top of the time sheets, but were unable to topple the times of Honda’s Gordon Shedden and Motorbase’s Mat Jackson. However, Dick Bennetts has revealed that the lack of pace in practice came from the team saving a set of tyres for an extra run in qualifying. The strategy worked, as Andy Priaulx would end up taking pole position, joined on the front row by team-mate Sam Tordoff, with the third BMW of Rob Collard lining up in fourth.

“We were a bit worried in free practice because we can’t afford to put new rubber on because we only had three sets,” Dick Bennetts told TouringCarTimes. “If we put a new set on in practice to check the practice we’re only down to two runs in qualifying, so we took a gamble to run on used and that the balance wouldn’t change much. Luckily we have three runs so we had a chance for little adjustments.”

The session was split by two red flags, which allowed the team a little extra time to set their fastest laps, all of which came in the final five minutes. For Sam Tordoff, who finished the session in second, the red flag was a great help, having gone off at the start of qualifying and having to come back in to sort out any potential damage.

“All things considered my second place feels like a victory,” said Tordoff. “Having bounced out the wall with three minutes on the clock I thought that was my session over, and still after that after we got rid of those set of tyres and gone again there was a red flag and I still hadn’t done a lap time with 15-20 minutes gone in the session. To come back to P2 feels like I was on pole by 10 seconds, at one stage I thought I’d properly messed it up.”

“With that red flag with three minutes to go I thought that’s it we’ll be two, three and five,” added Bennetts. “But with the regulations if they give the red flag under five minutes, they must give you five minutes and that really helped us. With Andy going P1, and that’s quicker than our pole time from last year so we’re very pleased.”

The team are now aware that they are in a prime position to shake up the championship standings, with Tordoff currently sitting in fourth in the title hunt, with just three meetings to go after the three races tomorrow.

“We need a good points haul in race one and a good clean lap,” said Tordoff. “As long as I’m in the front gaggle of cars at the end of lap one tomorrow I’m sure we’ll get a good points haul and a good lap, we give ourselves a good chance.

Jason [Plato, championship leader] has had a stinker and he’ll probably start from the pitlane knowing what he’s done before, he’ll be thinking damage limitation, we need to be on maximum attack. I just need to score three podiums tomorrow, or three top fives, that’ll be a good result.”

Dick Bennetts, however, refused to be drawn in to speculation of a good weekend, preferring to take each race as it comes and see where they are at the end of the day.

“I’d like to say yes but I’ve been in motorsport too long,” quipped Bennetts. “We’ve got three races to get through. I know what happened last year to Colin [Turkington], although he got pole he had to start from P8 because of a penalty from Snetterton. If they all use their heads and behave we’re OK, the trouble is it’s just three times 24 lap races, but theoretically we’re looking good.”