BTCC: DeLeon takes pole at Silverstone as championship leaders struggled

Daryl DeLeon took pole for the penultimate race weekend as the BTCC season begins to reach its closing stages.

The first part of qualifying saw the BMW’s take the early advantage as Charles Rainford led Jake Hill at the halfway make while the front wheel drive cars made the crossover. However, this would cause problems for those drivers as the rain would begin to fall making the track more slippery and times would begin to become slower. This would leave the front wheel drive cars to fight over who moves to the next part of qualifying. The track in the last moments of the session would begin to improve enough to see some changes as Senna Proctor, Mikey Doble and Josh Cook put in better times than Chris Smiley knocking him out the session after he pitted. The trio would continuously rotate over the last few laps to try and make their way into the top six to advance. In the last moments of the session, Dan Cammish dropped off the time sheets after failing the ride height check after spending most the session in third. By sessions end, the BMWs would remain one-two as Rainford and Hill advance to the second session. Doble would manage to put in a very quick lap at the end of the session to put himself in third ahead of Ash Sutton. Senna Proctor and Josh Cook also advanced due to Cammish’s ride height. Three out of Four Hyundai’s in the session would be eliminated as Adam Morgan Tom Chilton and Smiley would finish the session seventh, eighth and ninth while Nic Hamilton and Cammish would also be eliminated. After the session, Chilton would also fail the ride height check sending him to join Cammish at the back of the grid.

Group two would be out next with the drivers trying to put laps in early before more track changes can occur as Daryl DeLeon took the early advantage over Gordon Shedden and Daniel Rowbottom before Aiden Moffat would come flying through to go fastest by half a second before the front wheel drive cars start putting in more representative times. DeLeon and Moffat would continue to improve their times before Dan Lloyd puts in the fastest lap of the session. Tom Ingram would struggle to find his way into the top six as he sat on the bubble before Rowbottom pushed him put by jumping to fifth. Moffat would once again jump to the top of the times and would stay there for the final few minutes as no one could quite match him. Lloyd would finish the session second ahead of DeLeon and Shedden while Árón Taylor-Smith and Rowbottom would also advance to the next session. Shocking early elimination would see championship leader Ingram only end the session in seventh meaning he would start race one from fourteenth on the grid. Max Buxton would qualify ahead of Dexter Patterson while Sam Osborne and Nick Halstead would complete the group two times.

The second part of qualifying would get underway as the top twelfth would look to advance to the quick six session and battle it out for pole later on. Hill would go fastest early on from Rowbottom and Shedden as the times continue to come in and tumble. DeLeon would soon jump Hill to go fastest by seven hundredths of a second as the front wheel drive cars began to put themselves into contention. At just over the halfway point, disaster would strike for Sutton as he would spin at Copse, and he sat in twelfth place at this point. Proctor would put himself into second in the meantime ahead of Cook and Lloyd as they begin to split the BMW drivers. Towards the end of the session, the drivers would struggle to extract any more time out of the car and the tyres leaving DeLeon to take the fastest time in the session ahead of Proctor, Cook, and Lloyd. Hill and Shedden would also advance to the quick six as well. Rowbottom would qualify seventh ahead of Moffat and Rainford while Taylor-Smith would complete the top ten. Doble would qualify eleventh while Sutton would end the session in twelfth place only starting the first race of the weekend two positions ahead of rival Ingram.

The final part of qualifying would see rain begin to fall and difficult conditions would see Shedden almost go off the circuit at Woodcote as the drivers complete their out laps. Hill would go fastest from Shedden as the rain causes drivers and teams to make the choice to stick it out on dry tyres or switch to the wet weather compound. Shedden would take the top spot from Hill as the BMW pits himself while the rest of the soft runners struggle to switch their tyres on at this point. Proctor would soon be lighting up the time sheets with purple sectors all round on the wet tyres, blitzing the soft runner times. Cook as the only other driver to immediately switch to wets would go second fastest to Proctor at the halfway point of the session. Cook would improve on the following lap to then only just be a couple hundredths behind Proctor. Hill, who had by this point switched to the wet tyres, would put himself to the top with an astonishing lap as he goes nearly half a second quicker than Proctor. Suddenly Hill would spin at Copse but would manage to keep it out the barriers. Lloyd would join Hill at the front as he would go second fastest before Shedden, who was one of the last to put on the wet compound goes to the top of the times before DeLeon usurps the Toyota to go fastest in the last minutes of qualifying. Shedden would remain second while Hill and Lloyd would finish the session third and fourth respectively, Cook and Proctor round out qualifying  in fifth and sixth in a completely shaken up grid for race one.