Chris Smiley ups the ante to head second BTCC practice
Restart Racing’s Chris Smiley lowered the bar even further during British Touring Car Championship second practice as he topped the times ahead of qualifying.
Following Charles Rainford’s blistering time in opening practice – which was under the qualifying lap record – Smiley hustled his Hyundai around the Indy circuit in less than 47 seconds, a first for the BTCC.
EXCELR8 Motorsport made it two Hyundai i30s inside the top two as he finished 0.091s behind Smiley while Aiden Moffat enjoyed a strong showing in his West Surrey Racing BMW in third.
Mikey Doble continued his rich vein of form by finishing fourth with Tom Ingram and Rainford completing the top five.
The pace of the Hyundai’s was further underlined by Daniel Lloyd, Michael Crees and Tom Chilton who were seventh, eighth and ninth respectively. Rounding out the top ten was James Dorlin, who finished as the lead Speedworks Motorsport Toyota.
His stablemate Aron Taylor-Smith had missed a large portion of the session but did manage to hit the track in the latter stages for a handful of laps.
Qualifying at Brands Hatch is scheduled to begin at 15:10 and will be broadcast live on the ITV Sport YouTube channel.
