Hill, who switched to the West Surrey Racing-run BMW squad over the winter, pipped four-time champion Colin Turkington to his maiden BTCC pole position by just 0.018 seconds.
It was a strong bounceback from Hill, whose preparations hit trouble with gearbox problems during the second free practice session.
But there were problems for the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus team, viewed by many as a big challenger to WSR for this season: Dan Cammish pulled his car off at McLeans eight minutes into the session with the front end ablaze.
PLUS: The Ford BTCC superteam combining two reigning TOCA champions
This caused a red flag while marshals dealt with the inferno after Cammish had escaped, the incident caused by a suspected broken fuel line.
At this point, only the BMWs had completed representative laptimes, with Turkington at the top of the timing screens.
A few minutes after the session resumed, reigning champion Ash Sutton jumped his Ford – the sister car to Cammish’s – onto provisional pole, only for that time to be disallowed for exceeding track limits.
Sutton improved on the next lap, but could only move into second place thanks to the first of Hill’s fliers. Hill then backed off before going for another run, and improved further to extend his advantage.
That was just as well, because Turkington and Sutton then set laps that were quicker than Hill’s earlier time.
“I’m over the moon, especially in the circumstances,” said the diminutive Kentishman.
“The gearbox was out of the car 20 minutes before the session, and it was a bit doom and gloom.
“I had a fantastic car from FP1 and it felt amazing, and I was really annoyed because I lost pretty much all of FP2 – I felt I was on the back foot before qualifying, but my car crew got me back out.
“This one’s for them – thanks to West Surrey and my engineer Craig [Porley].”
Turkington set the theoretical fastest lap of the session on ideal sector times, but it was Sutton who was claiming to have thrown away a pole shot.
“I messed it up if I’m honest,” said the three-time title winner after qualifying third.
“I was easily on for pole – three tenths up into the final chicane – but I got a bit keen and accidentally blocked myself out of my own hybrid [which cannot be deployed until a car reaches 120km/h]!”
Free practice pacesetter Tom Ingram climbed the leaderboard late on to complete a very close leading quartet, just 0.063s off pole in his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N.
Fifth place was an excellent BTCC debut for George Gamble in his Ciceley Motorsport BMW, and he will share the third row with the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R of Gordon Shedden.
Stephen Jelley (WSR) and Adam Morgan (Ciceley) were seventh and eighth respectively to mean all five BMWs are among the top four rows, although Morgan lost the second half of his session with a fuel-pump problem.
Two Hondas will share the fifth row, with Dan Rowbottom (Dynamics) pipping Jason Plato (BTC Racing) to ninth.
Of the expected leading contenders who weren’t, BTC’s Josh Cook actually turned a few laps after his free practice disaster and lines up 16th, and Rory Butcher trickled his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla into the pits early doors, so ended up 26th.
BTCC Donington Qualifying result
| Cla | Driver | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Jake Hill | 1'08.418 |
| 2 | Colin Turkington | 1'08.436 |
| 3 | Ashley Sutton | 1'08.441 |
| 4 | Tom Ingram | 1'08.481 |
| 5 | George Gamble | 1'08.637 |
| 6 | Gordon Shedden | 1'08.653 |
| 7 | Stephen Jelley | 1'08.679 |
| 8 | Adam Morgan | 1'08.710 |
| 9 | Daniel Rowbottom | 1'08.794 |
| 10 | Jason Plato | 1'08.898 |
| 11 | Ricky Collard | 1'08.932 |
| 12 | Daniel Lloyd | 1'09.042 |
| 13 | Sam Osborne | 1'09.108 |
| 14 | Bobby Thompson | 1'09.228 |
| 15 | Tom Chilton | 1'09.244 |
| 16 | Josh Cook | 1'09.254 |
| 17 | Ollie Jackson | 1'09.397 |
| 18 | Michael Crees | 1'09.485 |
| 19 | Ash Hand | 1'09.554 |
| 20 |  Jack Butel | 1'09.604 |
| 21 | Jade Edwards | 1'09.967 |
| 22 |  Aron Taylor-Smith | 1'10.014 |
| 23 | Aiden Moffat | 1'10.182 |
| 24 | Nicolas Hamilton | 1'10.437 |
| 25 | Rick Parfitt Jr. | 1'11.370 |
| 26 | Rory Butcher | 1'11.802 |
| 27 | Dexter Patterson | 1'12.976 |
| 28 | Dan Cammish | |
| View full results | ||
