Josh Cook delighted to snare Croft pole

Josh Cook admitted he was delighted to snare his first pole of the BTCC season after topping the times in qualifying at Croft.

The BTC Racing man showed strong pace throughout Saturday’s running at the North Yorkshire circuit and just missed out on topping the times in the second session, where he ended up under a tenth of a second behind Colin Turkington.

Come qualifying, Cook ran at the sharp end throughout before ending up just behind the Toyota of Tom Ingram on the times.

When Ingram then failed the ride height however, Cook inherited his first pole in BTC Racing colours to leave him at the head of the grid for Sunday’s opening encounter.

“I’m gutted for Tom and Speedworks as you do everything as a driver and it’s gutting to have it taken away from you for something outside your control,” he said. “However, it’s great for us and we had good pace in the dry and the wet, so I don’t feel we were out of position; we didn’t luck into it. Tomorrow we have to get our head down and try to build on this.

“We’ve had some tough meetings this season and Silverstone was hard work. We’ve had a few weeks since then and the boys have left no stone un-turned to develop the areas that we needed to develop, and to build on where the car was strong. It was mega out of the box and you know you are on for a good day when it is like that.

“We’ve got to do the job tomorrow now but we know we tend to go better on race day. I have no championship to worry about so it’ll be elbows out for three strong results.”