The paradox for Jake Hill was that illness added health to his prospects for Knockhill, where a double win for the current British Touring Car Championship title holder provided a welcome boost for the West Surrey Racing BMW team. And a new storyline for the championship itself.
His struggles with labyrinthitis had forced him to sit out qualifying and racing at the previous round at Croft, thereby masking genuine progress made by WSR on improving the 330i M Sport – recalcitrant this season save for that golden weekend at Brands Hatch in May. By non-scoring in North Yorkshire, he headed up to Scotland with a clean bill of health, but “still not 100% there yet”, and demoted from fifth to seventh in the points standings.
This meant an increase in his TOCA Turbo Boost allowance from nine seconds per lap to 13 for Knockhill. And that, on a track short enough to be lapped in 50s, was a significant boon. Especially so on a layout that has always favoured the rear-wheel-drive BMW, thanks to the uphill exit from the hairpin and its kerb-riding abilities, so important at this acrobatic venue.
“I’m still tired to be honest,” reflected Hill of a day that brought him not only those two victories, but also a superb fifth in the middle race, in which he was one of just two drivers using the unfavoured medium-compound Goodyear tyres. “The illness has kicked me in the nuts more than I think I realised. But my vision and stability are now clearly not affected – if there’s one place that’s going to test that, it’s Knockhill. Every time you go there, you forget how busy it is.
“It wasn’t until Saturday night and halfway through the races that it was really kicking me down. I’m sure it will be one of those slow recoveries.”
The form of Hill’s team-mates Charles Rainford, Daryl DeLeon and Aiden Moffat at Croft had hinted to those who looked beyond the banner headlines of race winners that there was cause for optimism at WSR.
Jake Hill bounced back from a disappointing Croft weekend with two wins at Knockhill
Photo by: JEP
A test at Snetterton at the beginning of the summer break had cracked some of the codes to improving the BMW, and a 15kg weight break handed to the car just before the Croft weekend couldn’t do any harm. It came too late for the team to reap any benefit for that event, what with the 330i being a large car and the consequent difficulty in finding any areas to shed weight, but the intervening two weeks helped in that respect.
“Aiden can’t get there [down to the 15kg reduction] because he’s 15kg heavier than me and 12kg heavier than Charles and Daryl,” explained Hill. “We’d struggle to achieve another 10kg… And you know from the days of success ballast, 15kg isn’t going to change the world.”
Of the Snetterton test, he added: “With the engine upgrade that we had for this year we worked on a lot of different mapping stuff. Although the initial feeling was of a big improvement, we figured out at Oulton [the round just before the summer break] that it wasn’t actually beneficial. It feels nicer, but it was hindering us on drive out of the corner. We did a back-to-back test [of different engine maps] at Snetterton and that confirmed it – I found three and a half tenths immediately.”
“I think I’m driving out of the car’s capabilities if I’m honest. We just haven’t got that ultimate one-lap pace. It’s frustrating because the car we’re racing [Ingram], we can’t keep up with at the minute” Ash Sutton
So Hill went to a circuit he loves with a lot more confidence, even if he wasn’t personally in tip-top condition, and with that 13s of TTB per lap. The thing is, his team-mates had the full-whack of 15s. DeLeon led the way in the first two phases of qualifying, but lost out on pole position to Rainford in the final shootout by a mere 0.013s. Hill was third, 0.187s adrift, and estimating that his 2s boost handicap to the sister BMWs to be worth “about a tenth”.
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but perhaps an indication that Rainford and DeLeon are the real deal as far as BTCC talent is concerned. “So frustrating being P1, P1, then P2,” smiled the amiable Anglo-Filipino of his last-gasp defeat. The ever-effervescent Sussex man, meanwhile, was predictably ecstatic, especially since this was his first pole in the professional ranks of the sport (he never topped qualifying in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB).
Behind the leading BMW trio came the title battle. Championship leader Tom Ingram was always going to be absolutely hammered on this track with just 1s per lap of TTB available to his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback. But such are the qualities of that car that he was still able to place fourth on the grid.
Tom Ingram has increased his BTCC championship lead over Ash Sutton
Photo by: JEP
What to do now? The offset between the soft and medium Goodyears available at Knockhill is nowhere near as wide as it is between the soft and hard that were mandated over recent events. The thinking was that the BMWs in the top three would opt for soft tyres in race one, but if they finished as the leading trio they would be forced onto the mediums for the next 24-lapper. Ingram therefore went for mediums and, to his delight, 15 of the 18 drivers behind him on the grid had made the same decision.
This included main title rival Ash Sutton, who struggled on Saturday again and would line up his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST in 10th. “I think I’m driving out of the car’s capabilities if I’m honest,” he related of a 70-metre (!), two-wheeled moment at the chicane. “We just haven’t got that ultimate one-lap pace. It’s frustrating because the car we’re racing [Ingram], we can’t keep up with at the minute.”
That said, the Focus is proving to be a handy weapon on Sundays, although the powder was kept largely dry in race one. Here, Rainford and DeLeon went at it – they are fighting each other for the Jack Sears Trophy crown – until DeLeon sliced down the inside at Duffus Dip on the eighth lap, speared straight onto the grass on the exit, and tumbled down the hill to rejoin the track in the lead. “I probably over-committed,” he admitted. DeLeon soon gave that up, and then had to nurse the car to eighth position, with the Scottish countryside in the radiator causing overheating and costing him power.
Rainford led for a few laps, but had used up much of his TTB and soft tyre life, and Hill pounced at half-distance. That appeared to be that, only for Hill to stumble upon the meandering Power Maxed Racing Cupra of backmarker Nick Halstead with a few laps remaining.
The BMW clipped the back of the Cupra at the Leslie’s left-hander, fortunately with no ill effect for Hill, while Halstead slithered backwards before coming to rest with the rear wheels in the gravel. He couldn’t get it out, prompting a late safety car.
Behind the WSR BMW 1-2, an Excelr8 Hyundai 3-4 was reversed on the run to the finish line. Ingram had earlier allowed soft-tyred team-mate Senna Proctor through “to try and attack the BMWs”. Proctor then returned the favour. The beauty of this was that Ingram, who had already used the medium tyres, could not be forced onto them for race two, and his Yorkshire running mate could also have another stab on the softs from a lofty grid position. “It kind of worked in both of our favours,” grinned Ingram. “It means we can link arms and try and come through again. It was a real strategic race, that one.”
Strategy was key to success in Knockhill
Photo by: JEP
As it happened, Proctor didn’t make a great start and lost three places on the opening lap, so Ingram was going it alone. No trouble. Within three laps he was past the medium-shod BMWs, and it took until half-distance for the next soft-tyred runner, Dan Cammish, to make his way ahead of Hill. Not long after that, Sutton was up to third – good progress after a first-lap skirmish with Moffat had nullified his good start and dropped him to eighth.
While Ingram waltzed home, Sutton had 10 laps to erode the gap to Alliance Ford team-mate Cammish, who then, Proctor-style, moved over to allow his team leader two extra points on the run to the flag. “Credit to him,” approved Sutton. “It’s a shame we have to do that, but after watching them [Excelr8] do it in race one we had to respond.”
For Ingram everything was “absolutely perfect. I really couldn’t have asked for any more. What a car, honestly. Fastest lap, lap led [both of which give bonus points], and absolutely scratch-free.”
“That was probably my hidden best race, because it set me up for another victory in race three. I had extremely good pace on the softs – race three was probably the easiest I’ve ever won – and I wasn’t too scared about the medium” Jake Hill
He then remained perfect by pulling the lowest possible number of 6 from the reversed-grid draw. And this benefited the other Mr Perfect: Hill. While team-mate Rainford sank to 16th after going a different way on set-up, Hill held on for fifth and even challenged Proctor late in the race. His best lap on the medium tyres was 0.084s quicker than Ingram’s in race one, and the performance netted him a front-row start for the finale, behind only the medium-shod sister BMW of DeLeon.
“That was probably my hidden best race, because it set me up for another victory in race three,” reckoned Hill. “I had extremely good pace on the softs – race three was probably the easiest I’ve ever won – and I wasn’t too scared about the medium. I thought, ‘If it’s this bloody good on softs, we’ll be all right.’ I just bided my time, picked my fights. Tom, Cammish and Ash were on a mission, so I let them go and latched on. Just a bit of experience coming into play.”
To give credit to DeLeon, he took a similar approach in race three, allowing Hill the space to get in front at the end of the second lap. Cammish was soon up to second, while a sensational early battle for fifth, with Ingram fending off Sutton, delayed the two title rivals. “Tom put his nose in three or four times; he wasn’t quite far enough up alongside me,” said Sutton. “I left him enough room that we didn’t have big contact – we had a little bit, but it’s touring car racing, I’m not worried about that.”
Ingram and Sutton went wheel-to-wheel in race two, with the championship leader eventually winning
Photo by: JEP
Ingram and Sutton then got delayed passing the medium-tyred Proctor and DeLeon, by which time they had only a few laps to go and were still armed with TTB. Ingram therefore settled for fourth: “Once we got into the boost towards the end I thought, ‘We’re getting quick now, we’re a long way, we’ve been rubbing wheels, we’ve been rubbing tyres, we’ll just bring it home and I’ll be fine with this.’”
Cammish then repeated his second-race tactic of moving over for Sutton on the run to the line: “The call was, ‘Dan, you do what you think’s best. The gap’s there if you want to use it and give Ash every opportunity’. What’s the point in doing it once? The first one [in race two] would have been a waste of time then. If I’m doing it, I’m doing it – there’s no good flicking in and out of it.”
The problem was, he left it too late. The switch happened as they passed yellow flags, flying because DeLeon had come to a halt in the pitlane entry with alternator failure. Sutton was not only demoted to third post-race, but was also given three licence penalty points to add to the two he’d lost in the championship. The best-laid plans and all that…
Hill, out of a title fight in 2025, was immune to all that. “But we can’t get complacent,” he warned of his return to glory. “Knockhill has always been a fantastic BMW track. I’ve won there four years on the bounce. And from a qualifying perspective, we all had decent boost. Yes, we’ve made improvements, but have we all of a sudden got the best car? Absolutely not. That’s still the Hyundai.” And now it’s up to Ingram to make the most of it.
Donington Park is up next with three race weekends left in the 2025 BTCC season
Photo by: JEP
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