Smiley tops free practice again at Oulton

Chris Smiley yet again stole the thunder of the British Touring Car Championship big guns in free practice for the fifth round at Oulton Park.

The Northern Irishman, who heads the Independent standings aboard his Restart Racing Hyundai i30 N Fastback, went top of the times at the Cheshire circuit – for the third time this year.

The quicker second session kicked off on a damp circuit after a heavy shower immediately beforehand, with most of the competitors on wet-weather Goodyear tyres.

But the muggy conditions meant the track soon dried out after the rain had stopped, and by the end of the session three drivers had improved on Dan Rowbottom’s FP1-topping effort in his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST.

First of those was 2022 champion Tom Ingram with the lead Excelr8 Hyundai, but Smiley beat that going into the final minutes, and he then improved again.

Another to gazump Ingram’s time was Aron Taylor-Smith, the cheerful Dubliner completing an Irish 1-2 in a welcome turn of pace for the Speedworks Motorsport-run Toyota Corolla GR Sport team. Taylor-Smith finished up 0.134 seconds adrift of Smiley.

The Alliance Fords didn’t really feature at the top of the times when the track was at its quickest at the end of FP2, but they had finished 1-2-3 in FP1, with Rowbottom heading four-time champion Ashley Sutton by 0.095s and Dan Cammish in third.

Rowbottom’s FP1 best remained good enough for fourth overall, with Sutton’s placing him sixth in combined times, the two Focuses sandwiching rookie James Dorlin, who continues to make impressive progress with the Speedworks Toyota squad.

The rest of the top 10 times overall came from FP2, with the Hyundais of Adam Morgan (Excelr8) and Dan Lloyd (Restart) seventh and eighth respectively, three-time champion Gordon Shedden ninth in his Speedworks Toyota, and Mikey Doble 10th with the lead Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra.

The West Surrey Racing BMW team showed little sign of turning around its dip in form, with none of its four drivers in the top 10 in either session, Daryl DeLeon setting the quickest time for the 3-Series machines.

With the FP2 results being used to determine qualifying groups, that means that of the championship top four, Ingram, Rowbottom and points leader Sutton will all run in the first group, with Cammish in the second.