Ciceley Motorsport’s George Gamble was ‘absolutely thrilled’ to qualify in fifth for his first-ever British Touring Car Championship race at Donington Park.
Gamble was just two tenths from pole position and third of the five BMWs in the field in Saturday afternoon’s first hybrid-era qualifying session.
The 25-year-old had earlier been seventh in first practice, before he slipped to 13th in the second session, but in qualifying he was consistently near the sharp end, as at one stage BMW cars occupied the top three positions.
Gamble, who previously raced in Ginettas and Porsches, was over the moon to have such a strong first day in the BTCC, including out-qualifying team-mate Adam Morgan by eight hundredths of a second.
“I’m absolutely thrilled with it, it’s not really sunk in yet,” said Gamble to TouringCars.Net. “I think tomorrow when I’m starting near the front it will feel surreal then. I’m absolutely thrilled with it.
“Everyone has been working really hard to get us to where we are. We felt like if we could pull it together it was definitely there for the taking, and it came in nicely, so I’m thrilled.
“We’ve had good pace in testing, and today we’ve been building up to it, so it was just a case of getting all three sectors together and put in a nice lap, and we managed to do it.
“On the first run we were third, and then I managed to improve again on the time, so we were there all the way through qualifying. I’m really, really thrilled with that.
“All the BMWs seem to be going well. I think the only sector which is a bit of a struggle is the chicane [the final sector], as that’s where the front-wheel drive cars claw a bit back.
“It’s definitely a rear-wheel drive circuit, so it’s good to get up there and make use of it. Obviously, some of the other tracks will be the other way around. We’re in a good position so I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do in race one.”
Gamble, whose racing experience has largely been on the TOCA support package, admits that with his lack of touring car race craft he has some nerves about the start in race one.
“It’s a little bit daunting, but I think I’m in the better position being at the front where we can push forward with the fast lads. In the middle pack it can be a bit of carnage as a lot of drivers battle for position.
“With the pace we’ve got in the car, if the lads decide to go for it and there’s not a lot of tangling up, I think we can go with them and hopefully have a clean race.
“But for sure, the racing is quite intense in touring cars, so that is going to be new to me, there’s no doubt about that.
“I’d like to think we could bag some early points at this point. We don’t want to get involved in anything in race one – there’s two races after it.
“The people around me are in a similar position – they don’t want to do anything hasty in race one – it’s the first race of the championship and it’s a long year, so hopefully we can just have a solid result and push forward from there and go for it a bit more maybe later in the day.”