Chilton bounces back from red flag to top times

Tom Chilton bounced back from triggering a red flag to topping the times in free practice for the British Touring Car Championship’s visit to the Donington Park Grand Prix circuit.

The Surrey veteran was the only driver to eclipse Dan Rowbottom’s FP1-topping effort, managing to dip below the bearded Midlander’s standard just before the chequered flag was unfurled.

Chilton’s trip into the Esses gravel early in FP2 in his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback should not have resulted in a stoppage in activity – he was clearly waiting for a clear space in traffic to rejoin when the red flags were unfurled.

A sweeper truck, whose registration plate in the front windscreen suggested that the driver’s name was Jethro, then did its bit before the cars were released again.

Hardly had they got going when Chilton’s team-mate Senna Proctor, who on hard tyres looked as though he was heading for honours in the East Midlands Drifting Championship, undid most of Jethro’s hard work with a trip through the Esses gravel, the stones then sending Chilton wide on the exit to add further to the debris.

Chilton set his time on a brand-new set of soft-compound Goodyear tyres. Although the standard rubber this weekend is the medium, with the hard as the option that must be used in one race, the sporting regulations allow for any tyre – including the free choice of two carryover sets from previous weekends – to be used in qualifying.

“It feels great, although it’s only free practice,” Chilton told Autosport. “We’ve been very good at managing our tyres to the end of the season, hoping that it doesn’t rain – we’ve got plenty of softs.

“I’ve now tried all three tyres – we’ve maximised the hard and the soft, but we’ve got work to do on the medium [on which he spun].”

Chilton’s time beat Rowbottom’s FP1 best to the tune of 0.247 seconds. The Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST was on medium tyres at the time, and Rowbottom was sixth in FP2, in which he tried the soft compound.

Second in FP2 and third overall, 0.337s adrift of Chilton, was title-contending four-time champion Ash Sutton, whose Alliance Ford – as well as Dan Cammish’s – is sporting a special Valvoline livery this weekend.

Sutton controlled a massive slide at the Esses early in FP2 on the medium rubber, and set his best time on softs.

Impressively, championship leader Tom Ingram pushed his Excelr8 Hyundai to third in FP2 and fourth overall on medium tyres, although he could not match Rowbottom’s early-morning time on the same compound.

With Sutton and Ingram second and third respectively in FP2, that means the two title rivals will avoid each other in the first phase of qualifying.

Charles Rainford was next in the quickest of the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sports, ahead of Dan Lloyd’s Restart Racing Hyundai.

Rounding out the top 10 were Chris Smiley (Restart Hyundai), Cammish, Aron Taylor-Smith (Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport) and Sam Osborne (Alliance Ford).

Intriguingly, Taylor-Smith and team-mate Gordon Shedden are equipped with the M-Sport-built TOCA customer engine this weekend, with Speedworks returnee Josh Cook and Max Buxton using the Neil Brown Engineering-built Toyota unit that has powered the team’s machinery since 2023 for comparison purposes.