Dan Cammish “drove the wheels off it” for front row slot

Dan Cammish insisted that he had “driven the wheels” off his Honda Civic Type R after securing a front row start for the latest rounds of the BTCC season at Snetterton.

The Team Dynamics driver had been the man to beat across the two free practice sessions at the Norfolk circuit and looked good to complete a clean-sweep on Saturday when he sat on top of the times when qualifying was red-flagged.

After a brief stoppage caused by Stephen Jelley’s BMW, Cammish was able to better his lap time on more than occasion but the Toyota of Tom Ingram would also improve – with the Speedworks man eventually stealing pole by just 0.002s.

It meant Cammish had to settle for second but he was still pleased with the result, despite the disappointment of a missed pole position.

“The car has been great all day and I feel I’ve driven well,” he said. “We have delivered a great lap and to do that time is mean feat. Fair play to Tom for beating it and whilst the weight I had to carry compared to him might have made a difference, he really hooked up that lap and nailed it.

“I know I did three laps within a tenth of it, so I think we have shown we have a strong package and I drove the wheels off the car. I really made sure I got the best from it and I have nothing to feel bad about as second is still a good place to start from.”

Cammish’s result came on the back of a strong performance in the recent two-day tyre test, with the 30-year-old now hoping to push for a first win of the season on race day.

“I’m running the same car we finished the test with,” he said. “We ran what we should be running during the test, but you could see others were running soft tyres on qualifying runs, which you won’t get chance to do. That creates a nice headline but it doesn’t translate into anything, whereas we have carried our speed from the test into the weekend.

“I’ll do everything I can to now get a win tomorrow. It’s no secret that I had a tough start to the year as we made a wrong call on tyres at Brands Hatch and then I made an error at Donington to jump the start, and that cost me a lot of points.

“But since Thruxton, we’ve been on form and have been taking the fight to the BMWs; we’re probably the only ones who have. We might not have won a race but that takes more than just speed. I’ll be pushing for the win on Sunday and if we can’t do that, I’ll look to get the most out of our package and score as many points as possible.”