Josh Cook heads opening practice at Thruxton
Thruxton expert Josh Cook made the ideal start to the third meeting of the BTCC season by topping the times in the opening practice session of the weekend.
Cook, a seven-time Thruxton winner in the past, headed a BTC Racing one-two in the session ahead of team-mate Jason Plato as the Honda Civic Type R emerged as the car to beat, with the pair split by little more than a tenth of a second.
Jake Hill was best of the rear-wheel drive cars in third spot in his BMW, with a noticable gap to Ash Sutton in fourth. The defending champion was just under half a second off the pace in his Ford Focus with Colin Turkington and Dan Cammish rounding out the top six.
Points leader Tom Ingram left his quickest lap until late in the session before jumping up the order into seventh, with the top ten completed by Adam Morgan, Rory Butcher and Stephen Jelley.
Jelley was the first driver who was unable to lap within a second of Cook’s benchmark time.
The opening practice session would run after a brief ten minute shakedown to allow teams to run through a series of system checks but the Vauxhall of Michael Crees would be unable to take part in either as a result of an electrical issue that left him consigned to the team awning.
