Team BMR‘s Aron Smith and Jason Plato heaped praise on the Volkswagen outfit after a lock-out of the top three spots in qualifying for the sixth Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship meeting at Snetterton.
Just 0.071s separated the trio of Colin Turkington, Smith and Plato in the 30-minute session to decide Sunday’s grid, all under the 2014 lap record set previously by the latter.
Yet to take a victory in 2015, second-placed Smith was delighted with the performance of Warren Scott‘s BMR outfit, although he admitted he could have gone even quicker.
“I’m over the moon for all of Team BMR”, Smith said after qualifying.
“All of us are on for a really good weekend – I knew this would be a good track for us. Of course I would have liked it to be me on pole – I think a big fly must have hit the windscreen on my last lap and cost me those three hundredths of a second!
“It’s one of those things – I think now we can work together tomorrow and have a strong race one, two and probably three barring any upsets. I’m going to push for a win, but we’re going to work as a team and that’s the smart thing to do.”
Third-placed Plato meanwhile was buoyed by his own pace with 66kg success ballast in his Volkswagen CC for lying second in the championship, claiming a ‘moral’ victory for himself.
He said: “With 66kgs of ballast on the car, to be challenging for pole is fantastic. We know what the weight is worth around here – three quarters of a second – so weight corrected I’m on pole by three tenths on a 1:55.5s.”
On BMR’s massively encouraging season thus far, Plato added: “When you look at where we were seven months ago, and it really shows what can happen if you get the right drivers and the right engineers steering development in the right direction.
“It’s great to be a part of it – but there’s a race to win tomorrow and I’m going to go for it.”