Kane heads field in first session
Steven Kane celebrated his return to the BTCC by setting the fastest time in the morning test session at Brands Hatch. The circuit is hosting the championship’s annual pre-season media day.
Kane’s time of 48.821s was set with little over an hour of the session remaining and proved to be unbeatable. Gordon Shedden had set the pace early on and he and Kane exchanged fastest laps. He was demoted to third late on by the Ford Focus of Tom Chilton who was just 0.033 seconds adrift of the impressive Kane.
Alex MacDowall in the sole Chevrolet was fourth fastest but couldn’t join the aforementioned trio in breaking the 49 second barrier. MacDowall’s team mate Jason Plato didn’t run in the session due to a steering failure on the car. Frustratingly for the 2001 champion, his session was spent in the garage waiting for the required part to arrive. He is expected to run this afternoon, however. Also among the absentees were AMD’s Shaun Hollamby and Forster Motorsport’s Martin Depper. The former was kept out by a misfire whilst the latter will presumably take Forster’s place in the second session, as the team concentrate on one driver at a time.
Matt Neal was fifth in the second Honda, whilst Andrew Jordan won the battle of the turbocharged Vectras by finishing sixth fastest.
West Surrey Racing didn’t have quite the session they were hoping for with Rob Collard only seventh and Andy Neate back in twelfth.
It was a competitive session with the whole field covered by less than 3 seconds, and the top seventeen covered by less than 1.5 seconds.
The second session runs from 14:00 GMT to 17:00 GMT. You can follow the action via our Twitter page: BTCCCrazyLive.
| Pos | # | Driver | Team | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 11 | Steven Kane | Airwaves BMW | 48.821 | |
| 2 | 23 | Tom Chilton | Team AON | 48.854 | +0.033 |
| 3 | 52 | Gordan Sheddon | Team Honda | 48.907 | +0.086 |
For the full results sheet then click here.
All times courtesy of tsl-timing.com
Photo credit: Pete Mainey
Thomas Surgay
