Jake Hill scored a ‘great points haul’ in the British Touring Car Championship races around Brands Hatch Indy, after a win, eighth and second on race day in Kent.
After scoring pole position on Saturday, the Laser Tools Racing driver followed it up with a lights-to-flag win in the opening race of the day as he led home WSR stable-mate Charles Rainford.
Forced to run the less favourable hard tyre in race two, Hill led the first 19 laps of the race, more than half of which was behind the safety car, until the racing restarted on lap 20.
Forced to adhere to the safety car restart rules, requiring the leader to smoothly accelerate on resumption of the race, Hill quickly lost the lead at Paddock Hill Bend to stable-mate Daryl DeLeon, who was also on the faster soft tyre.
The reigning champion was then quickly shuffled down the order and ultimately finished in eighth.
Luckily, that yielded second on the grid for the reversed final race and after losing out to Rainford on the opening lap, Hill spent the latter part of the race battling with his team-mate and then defending from Team Vertu’s Tom Ingram, ultimately holding on to take second.
Having moved up to third in the drivers’ standings, Hill was pleased with his weekend results, in particular considering the turnaround in fortunes for the WSR team since the season opener.
“It’s been a great points haul especially against my main competitors,” said Hill to TouringCars.Net. “We’ve done really well – we’ve pulled 14 points out of the championship lead and we’re back in the game.
“We’ve had a fantastic round and we’ve definitely made big inroads from Donington. We’ve got a car we can go racing with again.”
Hill was slightly frustrated with the safety car restart rules in the second race, feeling that whilst he was unlikely to win, he could have finished better than eighth.
“I genuinely believe if we hadn’t had a safety car that the loss would have been very small in comparison to what it ended up being, even if Dan Cammish and maybe DeLeon would have still got past.
“The new safety car restart procedure just screws the leader over. It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re just screwed, because you’ve got to stay at a set speed and the guy behind you can get a run.
“The whole restart procedure stuff is not great. It’s a shame because I think we were driving really well and we had a great car on the hard tyres. Once you get shuffled out it’s hard to get that momentum going again.”
Hill and Rainford battled close in the final race, but with both drivers using their TOCA Turbo Boost, and Hill trying to hold some back in the lead battle, it meant he had to settle for second.
“In hindsight I should have just kept using the boost and gone for it. Charles drove great – he deserved to win.
“It’s nice that all of us, bar Aiden [Moffat], have had a win. Aiden showed great speed today and it’s a shame it didn’t work out for him. As a whole, the BMW is working well for all of us.
“It was also a great battle with Tom [Ingram]; a nice and hard-fought touring car battle. I’ve got no complaints, really, although he’s probably a bit miffed because it was a pretty good door-to-door battle.
“But no rules were broken and a good show was put on.”