The reigning Ginetta GT5 and BMW Compact Cup champion, driving a Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra, ended the pole monopoly for 2023 of the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus ST squad, which had stretched to eight out of eight.
Doble put himself comfortably into the Q2 top-10 shootout with fifth fastest in Q1, which had been topped by the West Surrey Racing BMW 330e M Sport of free practice pacesetter Jake Hill.
But no one had an answer to the Vauxhall, in which Doble was running the full 15 seconds per lap of hybrid boost at a minimum deployment of 115km/h. Hill set a laptime very early on that was 0.068 seconds quicker, but this was deleted due to a track-limits infringement.
Closest to Doble was four-time champion Colin Turkington in his WSR BMW – the Northern Irishman had seven seconds of boost at 130km/h, and fell just 0.012s short of pole.
“I can’t quite believe what’s just happened,” said Doble. “I thought getting into the top 10 shootout was achievement enough: ‘thanks very much, that’s good’.
“But then to hear my engineer say ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to go any quicker’… I’m over the moon.
“The thing I kept telling myself was just to not overdrive the car – it was on rails.”
Source: Autosport