Dan Rowbottom continued his recent strong form by topping free practice for the British Touring Car Championship’s visit to Knockhill.
The Midlander emerged quickest in both sessions at the wheel of his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST and eventually headed four-time champion team-mate Ash Sutton by 0.063 seconds.
The Scottish hillside circuit seems exempt from the recent balmy UK climes, the first session kicking off with a wet track and temperatures barely into double figures.
Everyone took to the track on grooved Goodyear tyres and although the switch to slicks happened en masse after 10 minutes, times did not improve from the efforts on wet-weather rubber until the final five minutes.
Rowbottom led the way at the end of that opening 35 minutes by 0.208s from the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback of Tom Ingram.
In the second session, Rowbottom lowered the previous best of Ash Sutton with three and a half minutes remaining to complete his clean sweep from the morning.
Sutton’s effort was also almost beaten by the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport of Andrew Watson, the bespectacled Northern Irishman ending up third on a weekend where he needs to turn around his recent run of poor fortune.
Ingram was fourth in the quicker FP2, with Aron Taylor-Smith ending up fifth in his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra.
Colin Turkington sat at the top of the times for much of the session in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330e M Sport but didn’t go any quicker and ended up in sixth place after the later improvements came in.
Aiden Moffat earned bragging rights among the Scottish contingent with seventh position in his Speedworks Toyota, while Chris Smiley continued his recent good form to make it four Irishmen in the top eight with Restart Racing’s lead Cupra Leon.
Rob Huff was first of the slick-shod runners in FP1 to go quicker than the long-time best set on wet tyres, and in FP2 he was ninth, just ahead of the sister Speedworks Toyota of Josh Cook.
Jake Hill languished in 18th place in his WSR BMW and, with alternate FP2 positions determining the groups for the first phase in qualifying, finds himself in the same batch as Sutton, Ingram, Turkington and Cook.
Dan Cammish, 13th in his Alliance Ford, is the only driver from the top six in the championship to run in the first qualifying group.
