Hill back on home soil at Brands Hatch for the final round off the BTCC

‘It’s home, I just love being here’ smiled BRDC Rising Star Jake Hill when talking about the challenge of the sweeps of the legendary Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit, which hosts the final round of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship this coming weekend.

Hill’s TAG Racing VW CC was rapid last time out - qualifying a career-best 5th overall, ahead of all of the manufacturer cars except Matt Neal’s Honda Civic, and was running 3rd in race one when mechanical issues forced retirement.

“The car was so good. We discovered we’d had an issue with the car since Snetterton, that just got worse for Knockhill and worse again at Rockingham - the car was as good as it was at Donington back in April and we qualified 6th there. We’ve had some rough luck for a while now, so it would be perfect if we could round off the season with another strong qualifying and a good points haul. I’ve Won here and been on the podium in support races - maybe getting on the podium in the final meeting would be fitting. And of course it’s Team HARD’s home race too - they are based in Kent and Tony (Gilham, team principle) lives just up the road. So a good result for the team would be special too!”

Hill was keen to praise the work done by Team HARD “Kingsley (Lewis) has been outstanding, as have all of the boys and my engineer Dan. This weekend my first-ever BTCC engineer Andrew will join us so I am really looking forward to working with him, and also we have so many people coming - it will be an awesome atmosphere!”

Joining Hill at Brands will be guests from several of his partners, plus countless friends and family.

“We have guests from TAG Racing, Sportif Motor Group, Brisky Racing, Ecoflam, Danfoss, Bill Rawles Classic Cars, Zynth, Model World plus support from ROLEC, AWS Appliance Spares, JD Pierce, On-Line Media and from friends Robin, Jason and about 40 family and friends coming along. I will be pushing so hard, and I can’t thank everyone enough for all they have done for me this season, and throughout my career - I have to give a special mention to John Miskin - he’s been there since I was in Ginetta Juniors in 2010 - thanks so much to him and to everyone else!”

Report by Simon Hill

Image by Jakob Ebrey Photography