Aron Smith hopes to challenge on race day

Aron Smith says he is confident of being able to challenge for more strong points on race day at Silverstone after qualifying inside the top ten for the penultimate meeting of the BTCC season.

Fresh from his first win of the campaign for Team BKR last time out at Rockingham, Smith ran inside the top four in free practice before putting his Volkswagen CC ninth on the grid for the opening race of the weekend.

At a circuit that should play to the strengths of the car, Smith will be keen to try and replicate the strong performance he displayed three weeks ago and said he was confident that his race pace would be better than that shown in Saturday’s session.

“I’m really pleased with P9,” he said. “To be honest, we can’t match the RML cars when it comes to one lap pace so the aim was to try and get into the top ten and I’m confident that we’ll have decent race pace.

“We showed that in the second practice session so now we have to try and stay out of trouble for race day. We need to see how things pan out but if I can get my head down, I think we have half a chance of some decent results.”