Hill and BMW bounce back to take pole

Reigning British Touring Car champion Jake Hill bounced back from a below-par opening round to secure pole position for the second round at Brands Hatch.

The West Surrey Racing-run BMWs were disappointingly off the pace at Donington Park on the first race weekend since the removal of hybrid – which has reduced car weights by 55kg.

But after much burning of midnight oil, the 3-Series machines have been back on the pace, and Hill beat rookie team-mate Charles Rainford to his first BTCC pole position on his home track by a mere 0.021 seconds.

“I just threw the world at it,” said the diminutive Kentishman. “I thought it might be on the cards when we topped our group in Q1, so I thought, ‘Let’s have a go.’

“I’m thrilled. The team have given me a car that’s capable of being back at the front.”

Due to his Donington form leaving him sixth in the championship, Hill was allowed 11 seconds per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost, while he also admitted that the resurfacing of the second half of the lap on the Brands Indy circuit had given the BMWs “incredible traction now off the last corner”.

Rainford had headed Q2 by 0.031s from Tom Ingram. While he couldn’t quite match Hill when it mattered in the Quick Six shootout, he was delighted to be on the front row at only his second BTCC race weekend.

The BTCC new boy was on the full 15s of TTB, as was third-fastest Adam Morgan, who ended up just 0.026s off Hill’s pole time in his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback.

Morgan’s team-mate Ingram was next, despite enjoying just 3s per lap of TTB. He could not even access that when it mattered – he pressed the button too early out of Clearways, and “locked myself out of boost by being an idiot”.

Ingram had looked in trouble in Q1 – he was fastest when the red flag appeared after Aiden Moffat lost it at Paddock and got his WSR BMW stuck in the gravel. Just as the red lights appeared, the 2022 champion was given the light signal as he entered pitlane to go to the weighbridge, but missed it and as a result had his times deleted.

Ingram got back out with just three minutes remaining and immediately sprang back to the top of the times, to move through comfortably.

Dan Cammish was the best of the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST brigade to take fifth on the grid, but only got through to Q3 at the last knockings of Q2 when he improved to knock out team-mate Sam Osborne.

The Quick Six was rounded out by Mikey Doble and his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra, continuing the good progress from Donington.

Osborne ended up with a career-best seventh on the grid, followed by Dan Lloyd’s Restart Racing Hyundai, Daryl de Leon (WSR BMW) and Ronan Pearson (Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla).

The highest-profile scalp from Q1 was four-time title winner and early 2025 championship leader Ash Sutton, who had access to just one second per lap of TTB on his Alliance Ford and took seventh place on his group, missing the cut by 0.054s.

“We knew it was going to be tough,” explained Sutton, who will start race one from 14th on the grid. “Coming here with one second of deployment really hurt us. We knew what we were dealt, and that was the outcome.”

BTCC Brands Hatch – Race 1 starting grid