Andreas Bäckman claims maiden TCR UK pole

WestCoast Racing’s Andreas Bäckman capitalised on changeable conditions in Qualifying for the TCR UK Series at Croft to claim his maiden pole position – despite switching car for the event.
Having swapped to a Honda Civic FK2, Bäckman had to contend with changeable conditions in an unfamiliar car. The Swede timed his final qualifying lap to perfection, being one of the last to cross the line on a drying circuit to post a time which was over half a second faster than Pyro Motorsport’s Oliver Taylor.
The entire field started the session on wet tyres, but as a drying line emerged the lap times began to fall, with Bäckman initially improving to third before putting in the pole lap (1:30.074) on his final attempt with just seconds left on the clock. Taylor ended up in second after completing just one flying lap (1:30.659) in the session, 0.585 seconds shy of the pole time.
Maximum Motorsport’s Stewart Lines was a season-best third, securing a second row starting position despite having his best lap time disallowed for exceeding track limits. Championship leader Daniel Lloyd, who had set the pace in both warm-up sessions and Practice earlier in the day, could only manage fourth, despite putting in a succession of fast laps towards the end of the session. However, due to a five-place grid penalty from the previous meeting, Lloyd will start Sunday’s opening race from the back of the grid.
By posting just one flying lap time, Taylor secured pole position for the second race, which takes each driver’s second-fastest lap and reverses the top ten of those times. That gives the Pyro Motorsport driver the upper hand over title rival Lloyd in both of Sunday’s races, with the latter starting race two from seventh after his second-best time is reversed.
Race one at Croft is scheduled to get underway tomorrow at 12:25 local time (13:25 CET), with live streaming available at www.tcr-series.tv.