Rainford takes Snetterton BTCC Race To Pole

Charles Rainford cruised to victory in the British Touring Car Championship Race To Pole at Snetterton.

The victory in the eight-lap race for the West Surrey Racing BMW driver, which sets the grid for the first of three championship rounds on Sunday, means that every manufacturer represented in the series has now won a race of some form this season.

On what has been a hot day at the track near Norfolk in the south east of the UK, the BMW came alive, with its tires handling the conditions better than the majority of the front-wheel-drive field.

“Once I knew I had Cook behind me, I knew he wasn’t going to do anything silly so really I was just waiting for the tires to go off on the front-wheel-drive cars, that happened about halfway through so yeah, very happy,” said Rainford.

“I’m amazingly happy. We struggled in free practice, that was no secret, you could see Daryl [DeLeon] and myself a bit further down. So I sat in the engineering office with Dan [Millard] my engineer and was like, ‘Right, how do we turn this around?’ [and] together we’ve come up with a rocket ship. So I think it’s going to be car cover on tonight, don’t touch it, and away we go tomorrow.”

Rainford started from second alongside Team VERTU’s Tom Chilton after both topped their respective groups in the timed sessions, Chilton keeping up his team’s run of poles for the Race To Pole at every meeting so far this season.

Despite having rear-wheel-drive, Rainford didn’t make a predicted better launch when the lights went out. Nevertheless, he challenged the Hyundai man round the outside at Riches. He couldn't make the move stick though, and Chilton had the inside line for the next turn, Montreal, and held onto the lead.

For the rest of the opening lap the two battled door-to-door, with Rainford being forced wide at Hamilton. Rainford returned the favor at Williams to cement the lead, with Chilton tumbling down the order as Cook, Tom Ingram, Ash Sutton, and Dan Cammish all got by. Compounding Chilton's misery was a five second penalty that was handed to him on the second lap after he was judged to have started the race out of position.

Sutton made up five places in the opening two laps despite only having one second (per lap) of TOCA Turbo Boost available, including a two-car pass on Ingram and Chilton at the end of the Bentley Straight, but his charge was stunted quickly after he sustained a puncture on the third lap.

After pitting, his race lasted just two more laps, with him retiring from a Race To Pole for the second time in three race meetings so far this season.

Cook’s second place, 1.991s adrift of Rainford, was his best qualifying race result of the season, going one better than his Donington result. He retired from the Brands Hatch Indy qualifying race two weeks ago.

Third went to Ingram, with Dan Cammish the highest-placed NAPA Racing UK Ford driver in fourth. Daniel Rowbottom was fifth with De Leon splitting the two Cataclean Plato Racing Mercedes in sixth ahead of Adam Morgan.

After his penalty, Chilton was classified eighth – he had finished fifth on the road – with Restart Racing's James Dorlin and NAPA Racing UK's Sam Osborne completing the top-10.

All three of Sunday's races will be broadcast live on RACER+, with Race 1 at 6:15AM ET, Race 2 at 9AM ET, and Race 3 at 12PM ET.

QUALIFYING RACE RESULTS

QUALIFYING TIMES