Daryl DeLeon took his second consecutive pole position in the British Touring Car Championship in qualifying for the final round at Brands Hatch.
While that strengthens the West Surrey Racing BMW youngster’s position in the chase for the Jack Sears Trophy, it’s the overall championship that is uppermost in the minds of the majority of BTCC fans.
And the result here was that points leader Tom Ingram and his only rival Ash Sutton were both eliminated in Q2, with Ingram set to line up seventh for the opening race on Sunday, and Sutton 11th.
Ingram was a victim of not only his paltry one second per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost on his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback, owing to his position at the top of the standings, but also the fact that this was compounded by the times being so close.
Ingram ended up just 0.126 seconds adrift of DeLeon’s Q2-topping best over an 89s lap, but that wasn’t enough to transfer into the Goodyear Quick Six shootout.
Nevertheless, it was enough to ensure Ingram of the Goodyear Wingfoot Award for qualifying points over the season, putting him beyond the reach of his only rival Dan Cammish.
Dan Cammish, NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus ST
Photo by: JEP
Sutton, meanwhile, was far adrift of the cut-off to graduate into the pole shootout. The Alliance Racing run-NAPA Ford Focus ST was fine in Q1 on its soft tyres, but the set fitted for Q2 provided a mystifying lack of grip.
In Q3, DeLeon set a lap good enough for pole only to have that disallowed for track limits. But the amiable Anglo-Filipino dug deep and was able to shade the best time set by Cammish’s Alliance Ford by 0.023s.
“I can’t believe it,” said DeLeon. “To have my maiden pole at Silverstone and then do it again here.
“The track limits are difficult – a little bit of understeer can just ping those sensors. My engineer told me when I was coming out of Graham Hill Bend [on the next lap] that my first push lap had been deleted and that this one needs to count.
“I just sent it through the whole back sector, and I’m so happy I could make it count for my second pole position.”
While DeLeon had the full 15s per lap of TTB, Cammish was happy to get on the front row with just 5s: “When I crossed the line, I thought, ‘That was a great lap.’”
Tom Ingram, Team Vertu Hyundai i30N
Photo by: JEP
Just 0.033s from pole in third, on 9s per lap of TTB, was the Alliance Ford of Dan Rowbottom, with the Excelr8 Hyundais of Tom Chilton (11s) and Adam Morgan (13s) also part of an incredibly compact top five covered by a mere 0.102s.
Some way adrift of them was outgoing champion Jake Hill, who made it through to Q3 in his WSR BMW 330i M Sport on his final BTCC weekend, but elected to use an older set of soft tyres in order to save good rubber for Sunday’s racing.
Of the others knocked out in Q2, Charles Rainford was fastest of all in the opening phase of qualifying in his WSR BMW but could only set eighth quickest time in the next segment, while ninth was Gordon Shedden, his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport just 0.165s away from DeLeon’s best in that session.
Completing the top 10, and last man ahead of Sutton, was Shedden’s team-mate Aron Taylor-Smith.
BTCC Brands Hatch – Qualifying results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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