CPRL’s Daniel Rowbottom emerged with the fastest time in the sole British Touring Car Championship qualifying session at Croft, 0.156 seconds ahead of Power Maxed Racing’s Mikey Doble.
Under bright skies and mild and breezy conditions, drivers took to the 50-minute practice session for their only opportunity to practice and trial their car set-ups ahead of qualifying this afternoon.
After the first initial laps, Toyota’s Josh Cook set the first time in the 1 minute 21 seconds, quickly followed by NAPA Racing UK’s Ash Sutton, with a 1:21.604 two minutes later.
Sutton topped the times for just over ten minutes before Team VERTU’s Tom Ingram took the top time, posting two quick laps in succession to ultimately lap the North Yorkshire circuit with a lap of 1:21.332.
With half an hour to go the red flag briefly came out, before the session resumed with 13 minutes remaining on the clock.
Rowbottom was then quick out of the blocks with the soft tyre bolted on to take the top time a few minutes later, lapping 0.157 seconds ahead of NAPA’s Dan Cammish, who had also improved around the same time.
Doble then pipped the Ford driver to take second by 0.001 seconds, leaving Cammish third overall.
Cook ended the session in fourth, ahead of Ingram in fifth, a quarter of a second off the top time.
Sutton, benefitting from just one second of TOCA Turbo Boost by dint of leading the championship standings, was directly being in sixth, just 0.004 seconds slower than Ingram.
With Ingram and Sutton next to each other in the times, it means the rivals will fall into separate qualifying groups later in the day.
WSR’s Charles Rainford was seventh, ahead of Power Maxed’s Aiden Moffat in eighth after a late improvement, WSR’s Daryl De Leon in ninth and Team VERTU’s Tom Chilton in tenth.
The championship’s form driver from the past two events, Adam Morgan, could only manage 19th in his CPRL Mercedes, having moved up a further four places in the drivers’ standings last time out and therefore losing 13 of his previously 20-seconds of TTB.