Charles Rainford emerged from an elbows-out opening lap to take victory in the British Touring Car Championship’s qualifying race at a sultry Snetterton, as points leader Ash Sutton dropped out after a puncture.
Tom Chilton had qualified his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback on pole position, while Rainford topped the slower group at the wheel of his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport.
All bets were upon Rainford using the traction of the rear-wheel-drive BMW to lead into the first corner, but Chilton aced the start. Rainford drew alongside at Riches and into the Wilson hairpin, but the veteran Hyundai driver held on.
But Rainford wasn’t finished. He tried around the outside of Chilton at the two left-handers of Agostini and Hamilton, getting edged onto the grass, then speared down the inside at the Oggie’s right-hander.
More paint-trading shoved Chilton wide and meant he conceded second place to the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport of Josh Cook and then third to his Excelr8 Hyundai team-mate Tom Ingram as they headed onto the back straight.
Behind the Hyundais, runaway championship leader Ash Sutton got a fantastic exit from the Williams right-hander, and the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium somehow squeezed into the gap between Ingram and Chilton down the back straight to nose into third place before they arrived at the esses.
Start action
At the front, Cook initially appeared to be putting Rainford under pressure. But, in the hot conditions, it was merely a case of waiting for the tyres on the front-wheel-drive cars to wilt.
By the third of the eight laps, the gap was out to over a second. With one to go, it was above 2s, before Rainford eased home 1.991s ahead of Cook.
“I was waiting for the tyres to go off on the front-wheel-drive cars,” said the effervescent Surrey racer. “That happened about halfway through.
“I’m amazingly happy. We struggled in free practice – there’s no secret about that – so I sat in the engineering office with my engineer Dan [Millard] and we were like, ‘How are we going to turn this around?’ Now it’s don’t touch it for tomorrow!”
While both Rainford and Cook enjoyed the full 20s per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost, the chasing Sutton and Ingram were on 1s and 3s respectively. But things would not turn out well for Sutton – a left-front puncture sent him off the road at the exit of the long Coram turn on the third lap. He pitted for a replacement tyre, but did not finish the race.
Ingram endured a sustained attack from Sutton’s Alliance Ford team-mate Dan Cammish, but managed to weather the storm and bring it home third, trimming his points deficit to Sutton to 39, with Cammish and Chilton next home. Chilton, however, was given a 5s penalty for being out of position at the start – the second time in three race weekends this has happened to an Excelr8 Hyundai driver sitting on pole for a qualifying race – and this dropped him to eighth in the results.
Ashley Sutton, NAPA Racing UK
That promoted the lead Plato Racing Mercedes A35 Saloon of Dan Rowbottom to fifth, although he had Daryl De Leon’s WSR BMW – like Rainford showing great pace as the race wore on – on his bootlid by the finish. The second Plato Mercedes of Adam Morgan also nicked ahead of Chilton for seventh on corrected times.
Ninth was James Dorlin, who impressed by qualifying his Restart Racing Hyundai on the third row, while Aiden Moffat fell by the wayside on the final lap with a problem on his Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon, promoting Sam Osborne’s Alliance Ford to 10th.
BTCC Snetterton – Qualifying race results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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