Dan Cammish ‘surprised’ to qualify in second

NAPA Racing UK’s Dan Cammish admitted he was ‘surprised’ to qualify in second in the British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton, having felt unwell heading into the event.

Cammish fell ill on Wednesday and has been unwell since in the days leading up to the fourth round of the year.

However, the 35-year-old improved progressively on Saturday, although he had earlier been just tenth and ninth in the two practice sessions respectively.

Having not improved his time in qualifying compared to practice, going a tenth slower in Q1 and only a tenth quicker in Q2, Cammish was taken aback to have been as high up the order as he was.

In the end, the Ford driver was 0.265 seconds away from EXCELR8 Motorsport’s Tom Ingram in the all-important Q3, giving him a strong front-row start for Sunday morning’s opening race.

“I’m surprised to even be second,” said Cammish to TouringCars.Net. “I came here this weekend a bit under the weather. I’ve been in bed for the last couple of days, so just getting here and feeling half sensible was going to be an issue.

“I sweated it out a lot this morning, but thankfully I don’t feel too bad once the Lemsip kicks in.

“We were nowhere this morning, ninth or tenth, and it wasn’t like we were hiding, I just wasn’t quick compared to my own team-mates or anyone.

“But we’ve chipped and chipped away, and then weirdly it was in Q1 when things changed. I did the same lap time as in practice, but the guys said it was P1 in group. I was looking around thinking ‘what?’. Everyone just shunted back.

“Then in Q2 I did a 1 minute 16 second lap, found two tenths, and was fifth. Suddenly I was thinking ‘OK, they’re not doing the lap times they did in practice’. Then in Q3, Tom [Ingram] got down to about where he looked like he was going to be all day.

“Everyone was a bit up and down, whereas we just kept chipping and chipping, and by Q3 my engineer James Mundy made a great change and finally gave me the car that I’d been looking for all day and I pulled the lap out when it really mattered.

“I’m proud of that one – to be second is a massive result. We weren’t beating Tom today but we’ll give him a good run for his money tomorrow.”

Although Cammish has only two Thruxton wins to his name, he gave a victory to team-mate Ash Sutton in 2022, has stood on the podium ten times out of 24 races in touring cars and previously claimed two poles at the track.

“I’ve had ten podiums here, multiple poles. I should have won twice in 2022 but gave it to Ash. I’ve always been good around here, but last year we struggled when we changed the car quite considerably.

“What I’m glad about today is that we started by struggling but we found a way to put it back in, which we didn’t before.

“It shows that the car is adaptable and with me in it we can do a good job. I’m really pleased with today. As a whole picture of going forward with me and this car I think it’s a really good example of what we can do.

“I’m now going to have an early night. I started feeling a bit rough on Wednesday, so about four days ago, and I’m hoping that by tomorrow I’ll be feeling a chunk better and that the adrenaline will kick in!”