Scottish tin-top veteran Aiden Moffat set the pace in practice for the British Touring Car Championship’s fourth round at Oulton Park.
Moffat whisked his Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon around the picturesque Cheshire circuit 0.133 seconds quicker than his closest opposition in a session that started on a damp track but ended up dry.
Many of the drivers used the early stages of the 40 minutes of running to scrub in wet-weather tyres, which look likely to be required for use at some stage this weekend, but all times were set on the soft-compound slick Goodyears that are the standard rubber for the event.
Runaway championship leader Ash Sutton jumped up to fifth at the chequered flag in the quickest of the Alliance Racing-run Ford Focus Titaniums, which have been subject to a small boost cut prior to the Oulton round.
In line with standard procedure from the BTCC’s TOCA technical team, data from this season shows the Focuses to be a fraction outside the tolerance band, hence a cut of 20 millibars of boost from the circa 1900 at which they run, although the loss of power is understood to be below 3bhp.
Dan Cammish, NAPA Racing UK
Photo by: JEP
Moffat looked spectacular at the wheel of the Audi, the outside-rear wheel lifting noticeably higher than any other competitor at the fast Cascades left-hander in what was a good session for the PMR Audi squadron: team-mates Mikey Doble and Dexter Patterson were fourth and eighth fastest respectively. None of the trio feature in the top seven in the championship standings, meaning they will not have any restrictions of TOCA Turbo Boost usage in qualifying, the qualifying race and Sunday’s opening race.
Tom Chilton was the closest to Moffat at the wheel of his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback, while the Restart Racing Hyundai of Chris Smiley leapt up to third on the final lap of the session.
Behind Doble and Sutton, James Dorlin made sure both Restart Hyundais were in the top six, the amiable Yorkshireman spending a substantial part of the session at the top of the times.
Dan Cammish put his Alliance Ford into seventh, with Tom Ingram ninth, behind Patterson, in his Excelr8 Hyundai. Rounding out the top 10 was the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport of Daryl De Leon, who was quickest for a period but did not improve on his final run.
Missing from action on Saturday is the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport of Max Buxton, who went down with a viral infection on Friday but hopes to be fit to tackle his home races on Sunday.
BTCC Oulton Park – Practice results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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