Dominant Turkington clinches Brands pole, leads BMW top-four lockout

Colin Turkington produced a record-breaking performance to secure a 25th career BTCC pole position and lead a top-four BMW lockout at Brands Hatch.

Simon Evans

14 May 2022

Colin Turkington (GBR) - Team BMW BMW 330e M

Team BMW's Colin Turkington took a dominant 25th career British Touring Car Championship pole position after leading a triumphant BMW top-four lockout in qualifying for round four at Brands Hatch.

The four-time champion was in scintillating form during the 30-minute shootout, which resulted in the BMW 330e M Sport driver clinching the top spot by almost 0.2s ahead of his West Surrey Racing stablemate Jake Hill in second position.

Turkington looked like the driver to beat from the word go, but briefly lost the top-spot to his Team BMW team mate Stephen Jelley after one of his qualifying laps was deleted due to track limits.

However, that did little to deter Turkington's charge with the 40-year-old subsequently setting three almost identical 47.5s laps towards the end of the session, pulverising the existing lap record by almost half-a-second.

Hill and Jelley had no answer for their WSR team mate, while Car Gods Racing's Adam Morgan made it an all-BMW top-four after displacing BTC Racing's Josh Cook to fifth in the dying seconds of qualifying.

As virtue of being the championship leader, Tom Ingram had no hybrid power available during qualifying and the Hyundai driver paid the price for it. Nevertheless, Ingram will still line up for Sunday's opening race in sixth position, five positions ahead of his closest points rival Gordon Shedden in 11th.

BTCC rookie George Gamble posted another solid performance to qualify in seventh position, meaning all five BMWs ended qualifying firmly in the top-seven.

From what was looking to be a disaster for the Motorbase Performance Ford outfit, NAPA Racing UK's Dan Cammish managed to salvage eighth position following a drastic late improvement from the tail-end of the field.

While Cammish was able to rescue eighth, Ash Sutton's nightmare Saturday in the sister Ford Focus ST continued after the defending champion could fare no better than 18th position.

Toyota Gazoo Racing UK's Rory Butcher and Dan Rowbottom completed the top-ten in ninth and tenth.