Kent’s Jake Hill recorded three top-five finishes in the fifth round of the 2022 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship at Croft Circuit.
A strong qualifying for the ROKiT MB Motorsport driver, saw Jake return to the top end of the order as he qualified in 6th place for the first race of the weekend at Croft Circuit – despite a red flag costing Jake a shot at pole position.
The BRDC SuperStar made progress in race one, moving a position forward to take the chequered flag from fifth place for the first race of the weekend – collecting strong points and a P5 starting position for race two.
Replicating his first race, Jake again progressed forward with one of the passes of the day, a neatly timed move on Daniel Rowbottom requiring skill and commitment to move up to 4th place.
For the final race of the weekend, the reverse grid race, Jake was drawn a P9 starting position for race three and showed fantastic race craft to progress through the field. Passing several drivers, Jake took the finish in fifth place, outscoring all his major rivals in this race, bar Cook, but taking more points than Cook and Sutton over the weekend to close to just 17 points of current champion Sutton, and just 41 points behind leader Ingram with 15 races remaining, and several tracks suiting both car and driver
Jake’s strong points haul keeps him in 5th place in the Drivers’ Championship with 154 points. Meanwhile, BMW retakes the lead of the Manufacturers’ Championship thanks to the efforts of Jake and his WSR stablemates.
“A positive weekend for us at Croft,” Jake said. “I felt a bit gutted after qualifying as we were on a real flying lap and nearly had pole if it wasn’t for the last red flag but was still pleased with P6. In the races, we were able to record three top-five finishes which is really good for the championship. We’ve closed the gap in the championship which was the main aim heading into this weekend.”
Jake now takes the summer break and will be back in action at Knockhill at the end of July (30 – 31) for round six of the 2022 campaign.
Pictures supplied by PSP Images.