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Marcus Simmons

BTCC Oulton Park: Rowbottom tops free practice from Cook and Ingram

The bearded West Midlander languished in the midfield in the opening session in his Team Dynamics Civic Type R, but sprang to prominence later on to shade championship leader Josh Cook’s early-morning times-topper by 0.024 seconds.

Rowbottom, who took his first and so far only BTCC race win at the Cheshire venue last season, focused on short runs, and indeed his best in the second session was over two seconds up on his next fastest lap.

“It’s going well so far, but it can all go wrong yet!” said Rowbottom.

“We had a really good balance last night in the shakedown, and that continued into FP1, but we struggled on the brakes. We worked on that and it’s good now.

“To be fair we were close [last time out] at Thruxton, it was maybe just the last little 5% we couldn’t get our heads around, but we’re looking good now.”

Cook continued his epic start to the season by topping free practice one in his BTC Racing Honda by 0.243s from the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N of Tom Ingram.

Although Cook was in the midfield in the lunchtime session, his morning best was still good for second overall.

Ingram was second again in free practice two, just 0.059s adrift of Rowbottom with a time set at the chequered flag, to be third fastest on combined times across the two sessions.

Tom Ingram, Bristol Street Motors with EXCELR8 TradePriceCars.com Hyundai i30N (Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images)

Ingram’s last-gasp improvement displaced the sister Excelr8 Hyundai of Dan Lloyd, showing better form to set his quickest lap in the final two minutes.

The two Hyundais bumped down Aiden Moffat, showing his best form of the season to date in his Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50.

Rowbottom’s team-mate Gordon Shedden was fifth in the second session to be sixth overall, while fastest of the BMWs was the Ciceley Motorsport 330e M Sport of Adam Morgan – the Lancastrian was third in the morning, but failed to improve later on, taking seventh overall.

The Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corollas of Rory Butcher and Ricky Collard looked nicely planted in the high-speed corners, and they took eighth and 10th fastest times overall.

In between them was Bobby Thompson in his Team Hard Cupra Leon, who was in the top 10 in both sessions.

Reigning champion Ash Sutton’s Motorbase Performance Ford Focus looked evil at Druids in the morning session, when he twice took to the grass to control moments at the high-speed bend, but even so he was fifth fastest, although he dropped outside the top 10 later on.

The West Surrey Racing BMWs of Jake Hill and Colin Turkington were also buried in the times, although Hill made it into 10th place in the second session.

BTCC Oulton Park - Practice results

FP2

Cla Driver Laps Time Gap Interval
1 United Kingdom Daniel Rowbottom 14 1'25.858    
2 United Kingdom Tom Ingram 18 1'25.917 0.059 0.059
3 United Kingdom Daniel Lloyd 20 1'25.962 0.104 0.045
4 United Kingdom Aiden Moffat 17 1'26.100 0.242 0.138
5 United Kingdom Gordon Shedden 19 1'26.144 0.286 0.044
6 United Kingdom Rory Butcher 17 1'26.208 0.350 0.064
7 United Kingdom Adam Morgan 19 1'26.238 0.380 0.030
8 Bobby Thompson 15 1'26.250 0.392 0.012
9 United Kingdom Ricky Collard 20 1'26.259 0.401 0.009
10 United Kingdom Jake Hill 21 1'26.291 0.433 0.032
11 United Kingdom Ashley Sutton 21 1'26.300 0.442 0.009
12 United Kingdom Jason Plato 16 1'26.321 0.463 0.021
13 United Kingdom Ash Hand 20 1'26.353 0.495 0.032
14 United Kingdom Dan Cammish 20 1'26.361 0.503 0.008
15 United Kingdom Stephen Jelley 16 1'26.414 0.556 0.053
16 United Kingdom Colin Turkington 19 1'26.459 0.601 0.045
17 United Kingdom Josh Cook 18 1'26.480 0.622 0.021
18 George Gamble 20 1'26.565 0.707 0.085
19 Ireland Aron Taylor-Smith 19 1'26.763 0.905 0.198
20 United Kingdom Sam Osborne 21 1'26.772 0.914 0.009
21 United Kingdom Ollie Jackson 21 1'26.837 0.979 0.065
22 United Kingdom Tom Chilton 15 1'26.862 1.004 0.025
23 Dexter Patterson 21 1'26.909 1.051 0.047
24 Jade Edwards 20 1'27.155 1.297 0.246
25 Nicolas Hamilton 16 1'27.227 1.369 0.072
26 Michael Crees 12 1'27.408 1.550 0.181
27 Will Powell 20 1'27.941 2.083 0.533
28 Rick Parfitt Jr. 20 1'28.310 2.452 0.369
29 Jersey Jack Butel 17 1'28.870 3.012 0.560

FP1

Cla Driver Laps Time Gap Interval
1 United Kingdom Josh Cook 15 1'25.882    
2 United Kingdom Tom Ingram 18 1'26.125 0.243 0.243
3 United Kingdom Adam Morgan 20 1'26.185 0.303 0.060
4 United Kingdom Gordon Shedden 16 1'26.238 0.356 0.053
5 United Kingdom Ashley Sutton 16 1'26.296 0.414 0.058
6 United Kingdom Ricky Collard 19 1'26.346 0.464 0.050
7 United Kingdom Dan Cammish 17 1'26.381 0.499 0.035
8 United Kingdom Daniel Lloyd 18 1'26.410 0.528 0.029
9 United Kingdom Rory Butcher 16 1'26.482 0.600 0.072
10 Bobby Thompson 14 1'26.502 0.620 0.020
11 United Kingdom Ash Hand 19 1'26.527 0.645 0.025
12 United Kingdom Jake Hill 14 1'26.551 0.669 0.024
13 George Gamble 21 1'26.587 0.705 0.036
14 United Kingdom Daniel Rowbottom 18 1'26.624 0.742 0.037
15 United Kingdom Colin Turkington 20 1'26.640 0.758 0.016
16 United Kingdom Jason Plato 16 1'26.665 0.783 0.025
17 United Kingdom Stephen Jelley 16 1'26.709 0.827 0.044
18 United Kingdom Tom Chilton 17 1'26.754 0.872 0.045
19 Michael Crees 17 1'26.882 1.000 0.128
20 United Kingdom Aiden Moffat 18 1'26.971 1.089 0.089
21 Ireland Aron Taylor-Smith 19 1'27.007 1.125 0.036
22 Dexter Patterson 21 1'27.049 1.167 0.042
23 Jade Edwards 20 1'27.322 1.440 0.273
24 United Kingdom Ollie Jackson 19 1'27.336 1.454 0.014
25 United Kingdom Sam Osborne 19 1'27.501 1.619 0.165
26 Nicolas Hamilton 21 1'27.580 1.698 0.079
27 Will Powell 22 1'28.340 2.458 0.760
28 Rick Parfitt Jr. 21 1'28.344 2.462 0.004
29 Jersey Jack Butel 14 1'29.138 3.256 0.794
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