Qualifying report
BTCC Donington Park
BTCC Donington: Hill takes first hybrid pole, Cammish escapes fire
Jake Hill narrowly headed a BMW 1-2 in qualifying at Donington Park to make the perfect start to his maiden season in rear-wheel-drive machinery in the British Touring Car Championship.
Marcus Simmons
Edited: Apr 25, 2022, 1:20 PM
Copy link
Share on Viber
Hill, who switched to the West Surrey Racing-run BMW squad over the winter, pipped four-time champion Colin Turkington to his maiden BTCC pole position by just 0.018 seconds.
It was a strong bounceback from Hill, whose preparations hit trouble with gearbox problems during the second free practice session.
But there were problems for the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus team, viewed by many as a big challenger to WSR for this season: Dan Cammish pulled his car off at McLeans eight minutes into the session with the front end ablaze.
This caused a red flag while marshals dealt with the inferno after Cammish had escaped, the incident caused by a suspected broken fuel line.
At this point, only the BMWs had completed representative laptimes, with Turkington at the top of the timing screens.
A few minutes after the session resumed, reigning champion Ash Sutton jumped his Ford – the sister car to Cammish’s – onto provisional pole, only for that time to be disallowed for exceeding track limits.
Sutton improved on the next lap, but could only move into second place thanks to the first of Hill’s fliers. Hill then backed off before going for another run, and improved further to extend his advantage.
That was just as well, because Turkington and Sutton then set laps that were quicker than Hill’s earlier time.
“I’m over the moon, especially in the circumstances,” said the diminutive Kentishman. “The gearbox was out of the car 20 minutes before the session, and it was a bit doom and gloom.
Hill claimed first blood in the 2022 BTCC with a convincing pole
Photo by: JEP
“I had a fantastic car from FP1 and it felt amazing, and I was really annoyed because I lost pretty much all of FP2 – I felt I was on the back foot before qualifying, but my car crew got me back out.
“This one’s for them – thanks to West Surrey and my engineer Craig [Porley].”
Turkington set the theoretical fastest lap of the session on ideal sector times, but it was Sutton who was claiming to have thrown away a pole shot.
“I messed it up if I’m honest,” said the three-time title winner after qualifying third. “I was easily on for pole – three tenths up into the final chicane – but I got a bit keen and accidentally blocked myself out of my own hybrid [which cannot be deployed until a car reaches 120km/h]!”
Free practice pacesetter Tom Ingram climbed the leaderboard late on to complete a very close leading quartet, just 0.063s off pole in his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N.
Fifth place was an excellent BTCC debut for George Gamble in his Ciceley Motorsport BMW, and he will share the third row with the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R of Gordon Shedden.
Stephen Jelley (WSR) and Adam Morgan (Ciceley) were seventh and eighth respectively to mean all five BMWs are among the top four rows, although Morgan lost the second half of his session with a fuel-pump problem.
Fire for Cammish means the NAPA Racing Ford driver will start last for race one
Photo by: JEP
Two Hondas will share the fifth row, with Dan Rowbottom (Dynamics) pipping Jason Plato (BTC Racing) to ninth.
Of the expected leading contenders who weren’t, BTC’s Josh Cook actually turned a few laps after his free practice disaster and lines up 16th, and Rory Butcher trickled his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla into the pits early doors, so ended up 26th.
BTCC Donington Qualifying result
Cla Driver Time 1 Jake Hill
1'08.418 2 Colin Turkington
1'08.436 3 Ashley Sutton
1'08.441 4 Tom Ingram
1'08.481 5 George Gamble
1'08.637 6 Gordon Shedden
1'08.653 7 Stephen Jelley
1'08.679 8 Adam Morgan
1'08.710 9 Daniel Rowbottom
1'08.794 10 Jason Plato
1'08.898 11 Ricky Collard
1'08.932 12 Daniel Lloyd
1'09.042 13 Sam Osborne
1'09.108 14 Bobby Thompson
1'09.228 15 Tom Chilton
1'09.244 16 Josh Cook
1'09.254 17 Ollie Jackson
1'09.397 18 Michael Crees
1'09.485 19 Ash Hand
1'09.554 20 Jack Butel
1'09.604 21 Jade Edwards
1'09.967 22 Aron Taylor-Smith
1'10.014 23 Aiden Moffat
1'10.182 24 Nicolas Hamilton
1'10.437 25 Rick Parfitt Jr.
1'11.370 26 Rory Butcher
1'11.802 27 Dexter Patterson
1'12.976 28 Dan Cammish
View full results
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
Take our 5 minute survey.
- The Motorsport.com Team
Read and post comments
Read also :
Share Or Save This Story
Copy link
Share on Viber
Previous article Hamilton: Mercedes F1 car "not far off" disastrous 2009 McLaren
Next article M-Sport calls for stronger WRC wet tyre after Croatia punctures
Top Comments
There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?
View More & Comment
More from
Marcus Simmons
A motorsport life in graphic detail
General
A motorsport life in graphic detail
Latest news
FIA enforces new rule to close F1 cost cap loophole
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
United States GP
47 min
FIA enforces new rule to close F1 cost cap loophole
Marc Marquez praises MotoGP title rival Jorge Martín: “He is an incredible talent”
MotoGP
MGP MotoGP 56 min
Marc Marquez praises MotoGP title rival Jorge Martín: “He is an incredible talent”
McLaren held fresh talks after Singapore GP clash as Lando Norris promises to "make better decisions"
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
United States GP
2 h
McLaren held fresh talks after Singapore GP clash as Lando Norris promises to "make better decisions"
2026 MotoGP Australian Grand Prix – How to watch, session times & more
MotoGP
MGP MotoGP
Indonesian GP
4 h
2026 MotoGP Australian Grand Prix – How to watch, session times & more
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.
Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here
Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page
Manage Alerts
Subscribe