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Marcus Simmons

BTCC Donington: Hill takes first hybrid pole, Cammish escapes fire

Hill, who switched to the West Surrey Racing-run BMW squad over the winter, pipped four-time champion Colin Turkington to his maiden BTCC pole position by just 0.018 seconds.

It was a strong bounceback from Hill, whose preparations hit trouble with gearbox problems during the second free practice session.

But there were problems for the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus team, viewed by many as a big challenger to WSR for this season: Dan Cammish pulled his car off at McLeans eight minutes into the session with the front end ablaze.

PLUS: The Ford BTCC superteam combining two reigning TOCA champions

This caused a red flag while marshals dealt with the inferno after Cammish had escaped, the incident caused by a suspected broken fuel line.

At this point, only the BMWs had completed representative laptimes, with Turkington at the top of the timing screens.

A few minutes after the session resumed, reigning champion Ash Sutton jumped his Ford – the sister car to Cammish’s – onto provisional pole, only for that time to be disallowed for exceeding track limits.

Sutton improved on the next lap, but could only move into second place thanks to the first of Hill’s fliers. Hill then backed off before going for another run, and improved further to extend his advantage.

That was just as well, because Turkington and Sutton then set laps that were quicker than Hill’s earlier time.

“I’m over the moon, especially in the circumstances,” said the diminutive Kentishman.

“The gearbox was out of the car 20 minutes before the session, and it was a bit doom and gloom.

Hill claimed first blood in the 2022 BTCC with a convincing pole (Photo by: JEP)

“I had a fantastic car from FP1 and it felt amazing, and I was really annoyed because I lost pretty much all of FP2 – I felt I was on the back foot before qualifying, but my car crew got me back out.

“This one’s for them – thanks to West Surrey and my engineer Craig [Porley].”

Turkington set the theoretical fastest lap of the session on ideal sector times, but it was Sutton who was claiming to have thrown away a pole shot.

“I messed it up if I’m honest,” said the three-time title winner after qualifying third.

“I was easily on for pole – three tenths up into the final chicane – but I got a bit keen and accidentally blocked myself out of my own hybrid [which cannot be deployed until a car reaches 120km/h]!”

Free practice pacesetter Tom Ingram climbed the leaderboard late on to complete a very close leading quartet, just 0.063s off pole in his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N.

Fifth place was an excellent BTCC debut for George Gamble in his Ciceley Motorsport BMW, and he will share the third row with the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R of Gordon Shedden.

Stephen Jelley (WSR) and Adam Morgan (Ciceley) were seventh and eighth respectively to mean all five BMWs are among the top four rows, although Morgan lost the second half of his session with a fuel-pump problem.

Fire for Cammish means the NAPA Racing Ford driver will start last for race one (Photo by: JEP)

Two Hondas will share the fifth row, with Dan Rowbottom (Dynamics) pipping Jason Plato (BTC Racing) to ninth.

Of the expected leading contenders who weren’t, BTC’s Josh Cook actually turned a few laps after his free practice disaster and lines up 16th, and Rory Butcher trickled his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla into the pits early doors, so ended up 26th.

BTCC Donington Qualifying result

Cla Driver Time
1 United Kingdom Jake Hill 1'08.418
2 United Kingdom Colin Turkington 1'08.436
3 United Kingdom Ashley Sutton 1'08.441
4 United Kingdom Tom Ingram 1'08.481
5 George Gamble 1'08.637
6 United Kingdom Gordon Shedden 1'08.653
7 United Kingdom Stephen Jelley 1'08.679
8 United Kingdom Adam Morgan 1'08.710
9 United Kingdom Daniel Rowbottom 1'08.794
10 United Kingdom Jason Plato 1'08.898
11 United Kingdom Ricky Collard 1'08.932
12 United Kingdom Daniel Lloyd 1'09.042
13 United Kingdom Sam Osborne 1'09.108
14 Bobby Thompson 1'09.228
15 United Kingdom Tom Chilton 1'09.244
16 United Kingdom Josh Cook 1'09.254
17 United Kingdom Ollie Jackson 1'09.397
18 Michael Crees 1'09.485
19 United Kingdom Ash Hand 1'09.554
20 Jersey Jack Butel 1'09.604
21 Jade Edwards 1'09.967
22 Ireland Aron Taylor-Smith 1'10.014
23 United Kingdom Aiden Moffat 1'10.182
24 Nicolas Hamilton 1'10.437
25 Rick Parfitt Jr. 1'11.370
26 United Kingdom Rory Butcher 1'11.802
27 Dexter Patterson 1'12.976
28 United Kingdom Dan Cammish  
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