Hill resists Turkington to clinch first ever BTCC pole

Jake Hill has claimed the first pole position of the British Touring Car Championship's Hybrid era after narrowly beating Colin Turkington, Ash Sutton and Tom Ingram to the top spot at Donington Park.

Simon Evans

23 Apr 2022

Jake Hill (GBR) - ROKiT MB Motorsport BMW 330e M

ROKiT MB Motorsport's Jake Hill will start the opening round of the 2022 British Touring Car Championship from the head of the field after securing his first ever pole position in the series at Donington Park.

With the BMWs looking in fine form, Hill was the man to beat from the very word go after the ROKiT backed driver dipped below Gordon Shedden's pole position lap record within the opening sequence of runs.

At one point, the BMWs locked out the top-five order prior to the session's one and only red flag after Dan Cammish's NAPA Racing Ford Focus ST caught fire in dramatic fashion on the run up to Mcleans corner.

Cammish quickly evacuated himself from the flame-stricken Focus, but his participation for the rest of weekend remains in question while Motorbase assess the damage to the car.

From the point of the session restarting, four-time champion Colin Turkington had wrestled the top-spot away from Hill, before defending champion Ash Sutton announced his candidacy for pole after he produced a 1min 8.641s lap just after the halfway point of the session.

However, Hill responded in devastating fashion by setting yet another lap record with a 1min 8.418s effort.

Turkington, Sutton and, later on, Tom Ingram came nail bitingly close to the benchmark, but Hill's lap eventually clung onto the top-spot by a mere 0.018s ahead of BMW stablemate Turkington.

Sutton will kick-off his title defence from third on the grid alongside Ingram's Hyundai i30N in fourth, while George Gamble produced a sensational performance on his BTCC qualifying debut to secure a place on the third row in fifth.

Gordon Shedden was the top Honda in sixth position for Team Dynamics, just 0.2s off pole position ahead of BMW duo Stephen Jelley and Adam Morgan in seventh and eighth.

The sister Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R of Dan Rowbottom ended qualifying in ninth ahead of a strong effort from two-time Jason Plato in tenth position on his first weekend with BTC Racing Honda outfit.