Dubliner Taylor-Smith stamped in a late effort in the cooler conditions of the first session to top the times at the wheel of his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra on a 47.905s.
Mikey Doble left it even later – the final lap of the session – to complete a 1-2 for the Midlands PMR squad with a lap just 0.007s adrift of his veteran team-mate.
In the lunchtime session, it was the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback of Tom Chilton to the fore, by a considerable margin by the standards of the minuscule Brands Indy circuit – the Surrey man’s 48.047s left him 0.171s clear of the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST of Dan Rowbottom.
Rowbottom caused the only red flag of the 70 minutes of running with nine minutes remaining when he went off at Paddock Hill Bend and “we kissed the barrier”.
The clock was set to allow five more minutes of running, during which the quickest time was set by the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla of Josh Cook, who remained fourth in the session but moved closer to the third-placed Alliance Ford of Dan Cammish.
The overall five fastest times across free practice all came from FP1. Behind the Vauxhalls, Colin Turkington was third in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330e M Sport, which sat atop the times until the closing minutes.
The four-time champion was just ahead of Cook, with reigning title holder Ash Sutton also within 0.1s of Taylor-Smith’s best in his Alliance Ford.
Ashley Sutton, NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus ST
Photo by: JEP
Taylor-Smith received a black-and-white warning flag for track limits during that session, and did appear to be running wider at Paddock than most of the opposition.
Chilton’s FP2 topper put him sixth overall ahead of the FP1 bests of Jake Hill (WSR BMW) and Rowbottom, while Cammish was ninth on combined times and Andrew Watson (Speedworks Toyota) was 10th.
Rowbottom’s off was the second of the weekend at Paddock for the NAPA team – 1992 champion Tim Harvey had a whizz in Sam Osborne’s Focus on Friday for the ITV coverage of the series, and dropped it at Paddock.
But the bearded Midlander remains one of the favourites for pole position as series organiser TOCA’s new sporting regulations kick in this weekend.
The push-button boost allowance has been doubled for 2024, and Rowbottom, since he is sitting outside the top seven in the championship, has the full 15 seconds per lap allowance, which will have a greater effect at Brands Indy than any other circuit, because it has the shortest lap time.
Team-mate Cammish also appears to be sitting pretty in this regard, on 13s of boost.
Daniel Rowbottom, NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus ST
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
The other new sporting regulation to impact qualifying is the splitting of the field into two groups, based on alternate FP2 times, for the first phase.
This means that Chilton, Cammish, Taylor-Smith, Sutton and Turkington will be among those fighting to make the top six cut-off in the first group to progress to Q2, with Rowbottom, Cook, Hill and championship leader Tom Ingram in the second group.
Ingram, twice a winner in the opening round at Donington Park, was outside the top 10 in both sessions in his Excelr8 Hyundai.
BTCC Brands Hatch – Practice results
FP2
FP1
