Daniel Rowbottom admits maiden pole feels ‘unreal’

Daniel Rowbottom described his maiden British Touring Car Championship pole as ‘unreal’ after he beat Team Dynamics team-mate Gordon Shedden to the top time on Saturday by a mere 0.005 seconds.

Rowbottom put in the fastest lap of the day six minutes from the end of qualifying, and although Shedden made a gain on his final lap he came just short of being able to deny Rowbottom a first pole in only his second season in the BTCC.

The 32-year-old put his lap down to not only work to improve his time during the day but also good fortune, with the traffic ahead of him not getting in his way on his pole lap.

“It doesn’t seem real that,” said a delighted Rowbottom. “Considering last year we weren’t even on the grid, it’s really, really nice.

“The team have done a great job, Halfords Racing with Cataclean, for the car to be on it. What a result.

“It was one of those things where I think it was more luck than judgement. We’ve been quick all day and we just managed to do the right bits at the right time.

“The car’s great, it’s really nice to be here and I guess it’s just a little bit of a reward for some of the hard work.

“I’ll be honest, the lap felt really messy, but sometimes they do, don’t they? It did feel messy. You’re trying to plan where you’re going to catch people and where you’re going to run into people.

“It just worked that time and maybe starting the lap half a second later we wouldn’t have had it. But it worked out great, it’s fine for me!”

Rowbottom’s previous best qualifying result had been tenth at Snetterton last time out.