Racecar customers - Tom Chilton and Alex MacDowall head testing at Snetterton - Tom ahead by just over half a second.BTCC PR below:
Tom Chilton left the rest in his wake as he headed Snetterton’s official Dunlop British Touring Car Championship test by more than half a second.
Chilton, driving his LPG-powered Team Aon Ford Focus ST, set a best time of 1m11.408s around the high-speed Norfolk circuit. It came on an almost fully dry circuit and, dramatically, against a series of lightning bolts in the distance following rain which severely restricted running during this afternoon’s session.
His time, well inside the race lap record, was a staggering 0.550s clear of the rest who were headed by Alex MacDowall. The Cumbrian youngster had set a best time of 1m11.958s to lead the way during the morning but his day then ended early when his Silverline Chevrolet Cruze suffered an engine failure during the afternoon.
Poole-based Chilton told btcc.net: “I was struggling for pace this morning but we’ve worked hard on our brakes and front geometry settings and it’s turned it around for us. It’s a shame it rained as that’s meant yet again I’ve missed out on doing a race run so I’m still a little nervous about our form in actual race trim. Maybe it’s something I’ll have to focus on during free practice back here in a couple of weeks for the race weekend.”
Track conditions this morning, as is often the way at Snetterton, proved generally quicker on the whole and it came as no surprise that the next six drivers all set their best times before the lunchbreak.
A hugely impressive third was Paul O’Neill in his Sunshine.co.uk with Tech-Speed Honda Integra (his team choosing to call it a day shortly after lunch). Silverline’s Jason Plato was fourth and with chief title rival Matt Neal’s Honda Racing Team absent today may well have stolen an advantage in terms of ‘hitting the ground running’ when the BTCC returns to Snetterton in a fortnight for its latest round (Sunday 8 August).
James Nash, a winner on the road here 12 months ago before being excluded, was fifth in Triple Eight’s Vauxhall Vectra ahead of Croft winner Andrew Jordan’s Pirtek Racing Vectra.
Chilton’s team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole, very much a man on form in recent rounds, was back in seventh – he was left playing catch-up after damaging the front end of his car in a rough ride off the circuit early this morning, the incident also playing havoc with his planned test programme. Eighth was Airwaves’ Mat Jackson, the fastest of the BMW runners.
Onslow-Cole aside, the only other incidents of note were a similar ‘bouncey-bouncey’ moment for Arthur Forster’s Forster Motorsport BMW and a brief red flag period to recover Shaun Hollamby’s AmD Milltek racing.com VW Golf which stopped with an electrics failure (a second stoppage was required later to tow back MacDowall’s broken Chevrolet).
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