Cammish beats Ingram and Sutton to pole

Dan Cammish grabbed pole position at the last gasp for the opening round of the British Touring Car Championship at Donington Park.

Cammish punched in the times-topping lap after the chequered flag had fallen to pip the sister Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST of Ash Sutton by a mere 0.011 seconds, while practice pacesetter Tom Ingram was only 0.020s further adrift in third.

Qualifying had been eventful for Cammish throughout. The Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman set the overall fastest time from the opening phase, but left it late in Q2 to record a lap that would not be deleted for track-limits offences to go through to the Quick Six shootout in fourth place.

Cammish again had times deleted in that final segment of qualifying, only to get it all right on the one that mattered to vault to the top.

“I thought I had the car under me this afternoon and I knew I just had to go out and do it,” he said.

“I’m really happy with the lap. I’ve had radio problems the whole day so I could only hear it on this stretch [the start-finish straight].

“I had to wait until almost all the way back to the pitlane. ‘Can you hear me?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘How did we do?’ ‘Pretty good – you’re on pole!’ A lovely way to start the season.”

Sutton felt that a two-wheeled moment through McLeans cost “one and a half to two tenths. It killed my minimum speed and my momentum. I left a little bit on the table.”

Tom Ingram, Team Vertu Hyundai i30

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Ingram believed that a red flag midway through Q3, caused when team-mate Tom Chilton parked his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback on the track on the exit of Redgate with an electrics problem, scuppered his chances.

“It put us massively out of synch,” he reckoned. “I had three attempts to pull a lap time out of it, but had a massive lock-up at Redgate and a big oversteer at the Old Hairpin.”

Completing a great day for the Alliance squad was Dan Rowbottom, the Midlander making it three of the Focuses in the top four.

The other to make it through to the final phase was Ronan Pearson, although the young Scot finished some way adrift of the leading quartet in his Speedworks Motorsport-run Toyota Corolla GR Sport.

Reigning champion Jake Hill proved that the West Surrey Racing BMW team is slightly off the pace at the moment. He finished Q2 in eighth place, just behind the One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R of Josh Cook.

Former team-mates Aron Taylor-Smith and Mikey Doble rounded out the top 10 on identical times, with Taylor-Smith setting the time first on his bow with the Speedworks Toyota operation to pip the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra.

Dan Lloyd with his Restart Racing Hyundai and BTCC debutant Charles Rainford (WSR BMW) were the others to make it through to Q2. Proving how close the field is, 11th-placed Lloyd lapped just 0.027s off the time that got Pearson through.

The biggest scalp in the first phase was returning three-time champion Gordon Shedden, who finished his group seventh fastest.

BTCC Donington Park – Qualifying results

Race 1 starting grid