ALEX KEENS TOP DONINGTON PARK TIMES

Alex Keens secured his second pole of the Vertu MINI CHALLENGE Trophy season after topping the times in a wet but drying qualifying session at Donington Park.

The Graves Motorsport driver emerged on top of the half hour session as the Cooper grid returned to action after the summer break, with the session turning out to be one that could play a big part in the championship race after current points leader Harry Hickton found himself mired towards the rear of the field.

For the majority of the grid, the quickest laps would come early in the session when conditions were arguably at their worst, with Keens setting what would be the pole lap on third tour.

However, as the circuit started to dry, the performance of the wet tyres started to drop away – although conditions never improved enough to get to a stage where dry tyres were the correct call.

As well as snaring pole for race three thanks to his quickest lap, Keens would take third thanks to his second best time on the grid for race one.

“The track was at its quickest early on so I knew I needed to get the lap near the start and luckily we managed to do it,” he said. “We thought it might get to the stage where we needed slicks before the finish but it didn’t dry enough – not that I’m complaining.”

Keens would end the session a quarter of a second ahead of Rhys Hurd as the Chandler Motorsport man maintained the strong form he had shown at Thruxton before the break, where he scored a double win to rocket up the championship standings.

That was despite the fact that he was one of a number of drivers to run across the gravel at the chicane whilst pushing for improvements, with Hurd forced to bail out and exit the track to avoid collecting the tyre stack marking track limits.

“This is my favourite track so I was always confident here, but we went the wrong way a bit on set-up as we expected it to dry out,” he said. “We didn’t have the rear grip we needed but we’re there on the front row of the race on ITV which is going to be important.”

Gabe Fairbrother would qualify in third spot for EXCELR8 with a best time just 0.056s down on the front row, but only 0.002s clear of Sam Gornall in fourth.

That was despite the fact that Gornall’s session would end early in the gravel at Redgate, which removed the possibility of anyone making a late improvement.

Alex Solley was just behind the Westbourne Motorsport man in fifth place, but his second best time would put him on pole for the opening race of the weekend on Saturday afternoon – well ahead of Gornall and Hickton; the two drivers ahead of him in the standings.

“Pole for race one is great and the car feels good,” he said. “I’m confident that we’re going to have a good car in the dry and being ahead of my two main title rivals means there is the chance to score some good points.”

On qualifying times, Team Avago driver Joshua Wilby enjoyed his best qualifying performance by far to set the sixth best time, with Reece Lycett, Ronnie Smith, Harvey Riby and Callum Eason rounding out the top ten.

Points leader Hickton faces a huge challenge to retain his advantage at the top after a disastrous qualifying session that saw him run off track on his first flying lap after suffering an ABS problem going into the Melbourne Hairpin.

Whilst the Westbourne team got him back out on track, the best of the track conditions had passed and he could only set the 20th best time despite a late gamble of running slicks on the front and wets on the rear.

As it was, Hickton probably needed an additional five minutes of running for the conditions to be suitable for the dry tyre, leaving him with plenty of work to do in races one and three at least given both are determined by qualifying performance.