Testing times are a positive for Cole during summer break
PROMISING times in the summer break tests at Snetterton augur well as former single-seater champion James Cole prepares to return to the Norfolk track for the start of the second half of the 2017 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship this coming weekend.
Southport’s Cole, the 2009 British Formula Ford champion, is currently in his second season with the Adrian Flux Subaru/BMR BTCC Racing Team, and came close to his best ever touring car race result before an unfortunate clash with a teammate when he was running seventh at the recent Croft round.
Still looking to make it into a top 15 points scoring position this year, Cole joined his Team BMR teammates, veteran BTCC star Jason Plato, Ash Sutton, last year’s top rookie, and Josh Price at the two-day test at Snetterton during the six-week summer break. It gave the team the opportunity to set up the Subaru Levorg GTs for round six in the 10-round 30-race series with qualifying scheduled for Saturday and three races on Sunday.
In the afternoon session on the first day of testing Cole finished 12th, only fractions of a second behind Plato (10th) and Sutton (11th) as the team continues its resurgence after a mixed start to the season when they were badly hit by centre of gravity regulations.
Sutton emerged at the top of the time sheets after the second day with Price (14th) Cole (17th) and Plato (18th) with just over a second splitting the Scoobie quartet.
A Team BMR spokesperson said:”It was a very successful test and all changes were tried on all four cars at different stages to ensure we got absolute answers for set-up.”
With race wins by Sutton at Oulton Park and Croft, hopes of more success for Sutton, currently up to fourth in the BTCC Drivers’ Championship standings, and the rest of the Team BMR squad is much higher for the second half of the 2017 season.
As 28-year-old Cole said after the Croft meeting: “We have strong pace, the second half of the year will be very different from the first.”
All three rounds of the BTCC are due to be screened live on Sunday on ITV4.