Stephen Jelley thrilled with front row start

Stephen Jelley admitted he was delighted to secure Team Parker’s best qualifying result in the BTCC to date after putting his BMW on the front row of the grid at Knockhill.

Jelley just missed out on pole position to the Honda of Dan Cammish after his most competitive showing by far this season at the wheel of his ex-WSR car, and now sits well placed to add to his points tally on race day.

Thus far, Jelley has a best finish of only 14th this season but said he was confident about picking up some solid results to move up the championship order.

“The main thing was to get a lap in the top ten as a banker and then I pushed like mad and put it on the line knowing that if I ended up in the gravel, we were still on for our best qualifying of the year,” he said. “Although we have struggled a bit in a straight line, there aren’t a lot of long straights here so we could benefit from the fact that we have good balance and can ride the kerbs well. The bottom of the car has probably been wrecked across the kerbs but I don’t think the boys will mind!

“We knew we had a quick car and it was important that I didn’t mess up qualifying and end up right down the order. This is one of those circuits where you have to build up to a good lap and that is what we did. We’ll see what the races throw up tomorrow but I want to improve on our best result so far and try and take the best result yet for Team Parker.”