Jake Hill maintains front row record

Jake Hill maintained his run of front row starts in the 2022 BTCC season with a solid second place in qualifying at Thruxton.

Hill had qualified on pole for the season opener at Donington before taking second behind Colin Turkington at Brands Hatch last time out.

The WSR driver looked well placed to take his second pole of the campaign in Hampshire when he put his ROKiT-backed 330e M Sport on top of the times.

However, a late lap from Josh Cook’s Honda was enough to pip Hill to the fastest time although he remains well placed to fight for his second win of the campaign on race day.

“It would have been nice to get pole again but I can’t be sad with a front row start,” he said. “To be honest, you almost expect to Josh to pip you with how good he is round here, but our car was fantastic and I know it’ll be strong tomorrow.

“I’m excited to see what we can do as we have been quick out of the box this weekend and haven’t really to do a great deal with the car. It’s only needed a few little tweaks and it made it quite an easy day at the office in that respect.”

Team-mate Colin Turkington will start directly behind Hill on the grid in P4 after mid-session tweaks to his car allowed the Northern Irishman to move up the order after understeer had left him outside the top ten.

“The lap that put me up onto the second row towards the end of the season was well-timed and pretty important,” he said. “Getting that time was all that mattered, and it has a pretty big impact on what we can look at doing tomorrow.

“We started off in quite a good place this morning and tried a few things with the set-up, some that worked and some that didn’t, but by the last run in qualifying the BMW felt good and the lap did the trick. I’m confident that I’ll have a good race car tomorrow.”