Frank Wrathall overjoyed with first career pole

Frank Wrathall was shocked to take his first career pole position at Snetterton, beating an on-form Jason Plato who had to settle for second in the MG.

Wrathall’s pole position is the first pole position for Toyota since they returned to the British Touring Car Championship last season, and the first pole for Toyota since Julian Bailey at Knockhill 19 years ago.

“I think I’ve shocked everyone with that,” said Wrathall to TouringCarTimes. “After FP1 I was quite confident, but after FP2 I was really down in the dumps as we really struggled. We completely went through the car and it was a completely different machine (for qualifying), so hats off to the team, it’s all down to them”

Wrathall snatched pole mid-way through the session with a time of 1:58.039 from Jason Plato, but the two-time champion immediately fought back, setting a time of 1:57.610 to retake pole, but Wrathall took it back again with less than five minutes to go with a new qualifying lap record of 1:57.595.

“When I did my 58 dead, then Charles my engineer told me I was on my pole I was quite shocked that my time was good enough at that point as I expected the pace to be a bit hotter,” said Wrathall.

“It wasn’t a perfect lap so I knew I had a little bit it hand, but when Jason went half a second quicker I thought there’s no way I can go half a second quicker, then sure enough I got it right.”

“It was close in the end, when I got out the car I came into the garage and I couldn’t celebrate as Jason was out on his final flying lap so it was tense, you could really hear a pin drop in the garage.”