BTC Racing’s Chris Smiley says he would have had pole position if traffic hadn’t cost him during qualifying for the British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone.
The Northern Irishman lines up on the front row alongside polesitter Jason Plato, after qualifying just over half a tenth adrift of the latter’s benchmark.
He told TouringCars.Net that although “it’s easy” to blame traffic for missing out on pole, he felt he had the performance within him and is feeling confident heading into tomorrow’s trio of contests.
“We were really strong in sector one and equally strong in sector two to be honest,” he said.
“We would have been on pole position if it hadn’t been for a little bit of traffic, but it’s easy to stand here and say that.
“If you look through our ultimate sectors then we would have been on pole.
“But listen we’re on the front row, the four guys at the front have nothing to lose, the only thing they want to do is win – and that’s exactly what I want to do!
“We’ve got this opportunity now, we’ve done a good job today. Tomorrow we want to win.”
After a strong Knockhill round which saw Smiley storm from 11th to fourth in the final race, Smiley feels confident of his pace and his tyre choice for the opening encounter if it remains dry.
“We were very strong at Knockhill, I didn’t get the reverse-grid because I let Josh [Cook] through,” he said.
“I’m not complaining about that, that’s just what you have to do when you’re at this point of the season.
“But to come from 11th to fourth round there showed the pace that we had, we were very fast.
“Tomorrow we have the soft tyre on for race one, depending on the weather, I think we’re on the right tyre.
“Jason [Plato] isn’t going to give anything away for free, but no-one out there does.
“We’re aiming to get a good start and stay with the pack and see how it pans out.”
The opening British Touring Car Championship race at Silverstone is scheduled to get underway at 12:00 BST tomorrow [29 September].