BTCC Season 2025 – brands hatch indy – free practice 1
Hello everyone and welcome to our coverage of this weekend’s Brands Hatch round of the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship. This is team WSR’s home circuit and the team have been working hard since Donington on a few upgrades for the cars.
As we roll out for the first free practice session of the weekend, we should point out that it is like high summer here in Kent. Even at 09.30, the air temperature is up to almost 17 degrees and the track temperature is in the mid 20’s already. This could be one of those weekends where it will get truly hot in the wooded basin that constitutes this beautiful circuit.
Speaking to the team, we are hopeful of incrementally more pace from the car for this specific circuit and the management have been deeply impressed with Aiden and Charles progress so far. Aiden brings a wealth of experience with 333 races under his belt including 5 race wins and 16 podiums which the team are keen to build on. WSR have also been amazed by Charles’ technical feedback with the engineers, although that shouldn’t be too surprising given his successful experience in the Porsche’s.
Out on track, the early part of the session was going really well on set-ups before a red flag was caused by Gordon Shedden going into the gravel at Druid’s and beaching the Toyota.
At the half way stage, things were incredibly tight with Charles clocking the 5th fastest time, with Aiden in 12th just 0.2 seconds behind. That is unbelievably close, even on a short circuit like the Brands Hatch Indy we are using this weekend.
With 8 minutes to go, Aiden was back inside the top 10 with Charles earlier lap still sitting pretty in 5th. Both cars pitted for the engineers to have a look at the engine and tyre temperatures and to get a some in session feedback from the drivers. It also gave the opportunity to look at tyre wear and to see how hard the circuit was being on that front left tyre which does so much work on this circuit.
It was rightly decided that it would be sensible for Aiden to go back out for the last few minutes just to bed some brakes in and scrub a set of tyres for the last few minutes of the session whilst Charles would go for a quick lap to deepen his experience in the car.
What an inspired choice that was as Charles put in a blistering lap that proved to be the fastest of the session and his first ever session topping the timing screens in the BTCC. We move on to Free Practice 2 just after 12.00 and we will bring you all of the action then!