Josh Cook was pleased to put his BTC Racing Honda in third on the grid for Sunday’s opening British Touring Car Championship race at Thruxton, even though he felt he had the pace for pole position.
Cook, a two-time winner at the circuit when the BTCC last raced in Hampshire in May, was just over a tenth of a second away from pole-sitter Daniel Rowbottom’s fastest lap on Saturday afternoon, with MB Motorsport’s Jake Hill also sneaking ahead of him for race one’s starting grid.
The 30-year-old has marginally more success ballast than his Team Dynamics rival – 6 kg – and admitted that he had struggled with the set-up on his Civic during Saturday.
“It was a good session,” said Cook. “I’m pleased with third. We struggled a little bit with balance issues, so I just had to hang on to it and get a lap out of it.
“P3 is good – I’m a bit disappointed because I know that the pace was there to be near the front, but I can’t complain – we can race from there.”
Cook has won a race on each of his last five visits to Thruxton – a run stretching back to 2018 – and he is confident of having strong race-long pace on Sunday.
“We know we’ve got pretty good race pace around here as well. Obviously, Thruxton is notorious for being ultra-hard on the tyres. Goodyear have done a lot of development over the years to make them go the distance, and our car really looks after them well. I’m really pleased with that.
“Obviously, credit to Rowbo for getting the pole and Jake [Hill] for sneaking in front of me! We’ve just got to see what we can do.
“Our car is really good on its tyres, and we can maintain really good pace over a long distance.
“I’m annoyed not to be starting at the front but I think we should have the pace to challenge as the race goes on.”