Jake Hill: ‘We’re a long way off where we need to be’

Jake Hill lamented a difficult opening weekend in his defence of the British Touring Car Championship title at Donington Park, as he struggled with the balance of his BMW.

Hill qualified his Laser Tools Racing BMW in eighth on Saturday, 0.724 seconds off the pole position time posted by Ash Sutton.

Although that was only a tenth of a second slower than he went in 2024, when the hybrid system was in place, other drivers were moving in the opposite direction, with Sutton being two tenths faster and Tom Ingram going a tenth and a half faster – and both drivers were quick to point out that but for a Q3 red flag, they could probably have been faster still.

With the cars being 55 kg lighter in 2025 thanks to shedding the weight that came with the hybrid system used between 2022 and 2024, in theory there should be widespread performance gains.

But at West Surrey Racing, engineers are grappling with how to redistribute that weight, given the inherent limitations of the positioning of ballast.

Whilst Hill’s performance on race day might seem reasonable – a pair of fourths and a tenth in race three – as usual in the BTCC there are numerous variables to consider, including levels of boost, tyre compounds and reverse grids.

“We’re just slow at the moment – we don’t really have a balance in the car that any of us are enjoying and we just have no pace, it’s as simple as that,” explained Hill to TouringCars.Net.

“We’re quite clearly a long way off where we need to be, we should be, or have been. This rule change has gone the other way for us – it’s helped the front-wheel drive cars out and it’s made us quite a bit worse.

“It’s not ideal – we’ve got to keep striving forward and keep learning. We did a lot of learning today and ultimately, we scrambled a good couple of fourth positions there with a car that is really slow, so I feel like I’ve done the best job I can.”

Hill’s troubles were especially evident in the final race of the day. Starting from third on the reverse-grid, unable to make a characteristically strong BMW start, Hill had slipped to 11^th by the fourth lap, as those drivers on the soft tyre (six of the cars ahead of him) used their advantage to good effect.

“Ultimately, I was around six or seven cars that were on the soft [tyres], and everyone had a lot more boost.

“The only thing that has been able to keep me in touch is having a bit more boost than everyone else. When you take that away and you’re on the medium [tyre] against a lot of the soft [tyre] runners you just get beaten up a bit.

“I got fed to the lions and finished P10. It’s not been ideal, but we just have to keep learning and keep going forward.

“We’ve got to rectify the issue – we think we know what it is, but we just don’t know how to achieve it yet.”