Power Maxed Racing’s Hunter Abbott was in a buoyant mood after scoring his best-ever qualifying result in the British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton, after putting his Chevrolet in sixth on the grid for race one.
Abbott had been looking strong throughout qualifying, battling with Subaru’s Jason Plato around tenth for much of the first half of the session, before improving late on to score sixth.
The result comes off the back of Abbott’s previous qualifying best, with the 35-year-old having taken seventh at Croft, demonstrating a marked and sustained improvement for the experienced racer.
“It’s been a kind of gradual progression,” said Abbott to TouringCars.Net. “The slow start to the year has been a combination of a number of things. One is me coming from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive. It’s not a straightforward transition; there’s a lot of subtleties to the driving style.
“Coming to a front-wheel driver you can suddenly have oversteer and understeer, but it’s actually you as a driver causing that because you’re not driving it how it’s meant to be driven. So the first three rounds were a steep learning curve.
“Now, where we are, we’re at the stage where I can start to give the team feedback, so we’re making good progression and it’s all starting to click.”
Abbott believes that he can build on his strong starting position to potentially be in the mix for the reverse-grid third race – provided he can stay out of trouble through the notoriously tricky first two turns at the Norfolk circuit.
“Sixth is nice because it puts you in a good position if you can stay there or thereabouts for the reverse grid after race two.
“You’ve got a very tight second turn; you’re coming through a very fast first corner into a very tight second corner. With the best will in the world there’s 31 cars trying to get through as hairpin, so there’s always going to be something going on, but statistically you’re in a better position being sixth than you are being 16th!”