Hunter Abbott: “I think we could have been on the front row”

Power Maxed Racing’s Hunter Abbott qualified in seventh position at Croft, his best performance of the year in the team’s Chevrolet Cruze, and believes if it wasn’t for a mistake on his final run, he could have been sharing the front row on Sunday with Subaru Team BMR driver Colin Turkington.

The 35-year-old set his best time right at the end of the session to go seventh fastest in the Chevrolet Cruze, which has had a troubled start to the season, though he’s still adapting to front-wheel drive after only having raced rear-wheel drive to-date.

“For me, I’m learning front-wheel drive as it’s so different to everything I’ve done previously,” said Abbott to TouringCarTimes. “Because of my lack of experience with front-wheel drive, Sunny In and Sunny Out and Hawthorn, those two you need to have in your arsenal a good technique of managing tyres, so that’ll be a bit of a test tomorrow.”

On his qualifying performance, Abbott is happy with his qualifying run, but believes there was a chance to be even further up the grid on Sunday.

“In qualifying, the red flag in the middle screwed us a little bit as we’d just stuck on new tyres and came in and swapped the fronts and then went out before the red,” Abbott explained. “I think what I’m surprised at is the gap between seventh and second, and on my best lap I missed a gear shift which when we looked at the data we’ve seen cost us about two-tenths of a second, which would have meant the front row.”