Tom Chilton: “This is great for my championship”
Motorbase Performance’s Tom Chilton was elated after qualifying third on the grid for the first race at Silverstone, with the championship front-runners mired down the order, the 33-year-old aims to make up ground in the standings at a race where he “could have been on pole.”
Chilton’s team-mate Sam Tordoff took his first pole in three years in the #600 Ford Focus RS, while Chilton just missed out by eight-hundredths of a second, with Ricky Collard’s West Surrey Racing BMW splitting the pair.
“I got held up a bit, but that’s what happens when you’re slipstreaming,” said Chilton to TouringCarTimes. “I got help up by Matt Simpson at Luffield, and that cost me some time – if I’d got all my best sectors I’d have been on pole by a tenth and a half, so I’m fast with 30kg onboard.”
“However, this is great for my championship, I just need to cruise around and finish in the top three.
“It’s critical to not make a mistake tomorrow,” he added. “The only thing I’m worried about is Ricky (Collard) ahead of me. He could lock up at Becketts on cold tyres and then it’ll be easy, or he could try and defend and bunch us up and (Jack) Goff gets past or hits me.”
