Frank Wrathall qualifies fourth with ‘re-engineered’ Toyota

Frank Wrathall has qualified in fourth place at Croft in the Dynojet Racing Toyota Avensis, and says the work the team’s done since Oulton Park has paid off today at Croft.

Wrathall was the fastest non-Honda in qualifying, placing himself fourth on the grid behind the two works Hondas of Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden, as well as the independent Honda of Andrew Jordan, and says the work the team’s done since the last meeting has been a major factor.

“We’ve completely re-engineered the car,” said Wrathall to TouringCarTimes. “We struggled for pace a bit at Oulton, which got us in a few scrapes we’d have liked to have avoided. We knew where the problems were so we’ve worked hard in-between races to rectify that.”

“Because the car’s so different, in FP1 we were struggling to find a good balance of the car. But we made some good steps forward between the two practice sessions, and then again from FP2 to qualifying to enable to us to qualify fourth.”

Wrathall was one of very few drivers to improve later in the session, whilst the majority of the grid was set in the first ten minutes of the session, explaining “We did three runs on new tyres, we just made a really small change to the set-up for the last run and I just managed to nail the lap which took us from seventh to fourth, and squeezed every last bit of the car on that lap.”

Looking ahead to tomorrow, the 25-year-old Prestonian is well aware of his position on the grid and the hard chargers that will be around him in race one.

“I’ve got Plato alongside and Collard right behind me who’s a notoriously fast starter, so it’ll be interesting, and who knows what the weather’s going to do.”