Dan Rowbottom secures maiden BTCC pole

Dan Rowbottom produced a storming lap in qualifying at Brands Hatch to secure his maiden British Touring Car Championship pole position ahead of round three of the season.

In a session that proved to be quicker than expected based on what had happened in free practice, the Team Dynamics driver was a front-runner throughout having gone third early on, and looked well placed to secure his best qualifying result to date.

With barely six minutes of the session left to run however, Rowbottom suddenly managed to pull together an improved lap to jump ahead of Jake Hill’s Ford, which had been on top of the times from the opening laps.

A 48.074s lap would prove to be unbeatable at Rowbottom secured pole, although team-mate Gordon Shedden ran him close as he improved late on to end up just 0.005s behind.

Hill was therefore left to settle for third place at his home circuit and lines up alongside Tom Oliphant after he produced the best rear wheel drive lap in his BMW ahead of the Infiniti of Aiden Moffat; the Scot vaulting up the order mid-way through the session in his Q50 for his best result of the year to date.

Having been quick across practice, Tom Ingram took sixth and was the best placed of the drivers running ballast, just ahead of points leader Ash Sutton.

Chris Smiley, Josh Cook and Stephen Jelley rounded out the top ten.

Amongst those with work to do on race day are Colin Turkington, with his BMW down in 14th place on the times although that was ahead of both Rory Butcher and Jason Plato down in 16th and 17th.