Colin Turkington came good at the right moment to claim pole position for the British Touring Car Championship round at Croft.
After a disastrous previous event at Oulton Park, the Northern Irish four-time champion arrived at the North Yorkshire venue down in sixth in the points, but as a result of this was allowed 11 seconds per lap of hybrid use on his West Surrey Racing-run BMW 330e M Sport.
Turkington looked less than convincing in the first segment of qualifying – he was third in his group, but this was the weaker side of the split and his time would not have even graduated him from the other group’s top six.
But progress was made in the second phase, when Turkington was second quickest, albeit 0.239 seconds adrift of session topper Tom Ingram.
Turkington then made it count in the Quick Six shootout, setting his pole effort relatively early in the 10-minute showdown and finishing up 0.173s clear of the second-placed Dan Cammish to take the seventh Croft pole of his BTCC career.
“I need a good weekend, especially after Oulton Park,” said Turkington. “Croft has been my patch – if there’s anywhere I’d want to start the second half of the season, it’s here.
“It was super-difficult out there. In Q1 I was struggling, just fighting the car. In Q2 and Q3 we got it tuned in a bit, but even in Q3 I sort of had to coach myself around not to overdrive.
“It’s so hard to get the car perfect around Croft – I almost had to drive at 95% and link all the dots, and the lap time came.”
Cammish only just bumped underdog Chris Smiley out of the frame for the shootout late in Q2, but the Yorkshireman, on his local circuit, came good when it mattered at the wheel of his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST, running seven seconds of hybrid boost per lap.
Ingram, on just three seconds of boost, was third in the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback, and felt he could have been faster still had he not made a mistake on his first push lap.
But that was good enough to edge out Aron Taylor-Smith, the Irishman doing a fine job to put his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra on the second row of the grid.
Taylor-Smith narrowly headed Rob Huff, who headed the Speedworks Motorsport contingent in qualifying and will start his Toyota Corolla GR Sport from fifth on the grid.
Bottom of the shootout was Ash Sutton. The reigning champion, with five seconds of hybrid per lap on his Alliance Ford, controlled a huge sideways moment into the complex on his first push lap, and thereafter could never chip his way into the leading contenders.
Smiley will start his Restart Racing Cupra Leon from seventh ahead of the Excelr8 Hyundai of Tom Chilton, who comfortably topped his Q1 group but whose pace fell away in the following phase.
Josh Cook was ninth in Q2 in his Speedworks Toyota and championship leader Jake Hill 11th in his WSR BMW, on just one second of power boost per lap. Both set times that should have got them through only to be deleted for track limits, with Hill “absolutely outraged” and unable to explain “how or where” it happened.
This duo sandwiched the PMR Vauxhall of Mikey Doble, with Andrew Watson completing the Q2 dozen in his Speedworks Toyota.
Notable scalps from Q1 were Adam Morgan, who spun his WSR BMW at the chicane early on, and Dan Rowbottom. The bearded Midlander had two laps in his Alliance Ford stripped for track limits – one of them would have been fastest overall in Q1; the other would have got him comfortably through in fourth place.
BTCC Croft - Qualifying results
Q3
| Cla | Driver | # | Car | Laps | Time | Interval | km/h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  C. Turkington Team BMW |
20 | BMW 330e M Sport | 7 |
1'21.072 |
93.255 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | D. Cammish NAPA Racing UK |
27 | Ford Focus ST | 6 |
+0.173 1'21.245 |
0.173 | 93.056 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | T. Ingram Team Bristol Street Motors |
80 | Hyundai i30 Fastback N Performance | 6 |
+0.181 1'21.253 |
0.008 | 93.047 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 |  A. Taylor-Smith Evans Halshaw Power Maxed Racing |
40 | Vauxhall Astra | 6 |
+0.361 1'21.433 |
0.180 | 92.841 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 | R. Huff Toyota Gazoo Racing UK |
12 | Toyota Corolla GR Sport | 6 |
+0.406 1'21.478 |
0.045 | 92.790 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6 | A. Sutton NAPA Racing UK |
1 | Ford Focus ST | 6 |
+0.510 1'21.582 |
0.104 | 92.672 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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