Hill, who switched to the West Surrey Racing-run BMW squad over the winter, pipped four-time champion Colin Turkington to his maiden BTCC pole position by just 0.018 seconds.
It was a strong bounceback from Hill, whose preparations hit trouble with gearbox problems during the second free practice session.
But there were problems for the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus team, viewed by many as a big challenger to WSR for this season: Dan Cammish pulled his car off at McLeans eight minutes into the session with the front end ablaze.
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This caused a red flag while marshals dealt with the inferno after Cammish had escaped, the incident caused by a suspected broken fuel line.
At this point, only the BMWs had completed representative laptimes, with Turkington at the top of the timing screens.
A few minutes after the session resumed, reigning champion Ash Sutton jumped his Ford – the sister car to Cammish’s – onto provisional pole, only for that time to be disallowed for exceeding track limits.
Sutton improved on the next lap, but could only move into second place thanks to the first of Hill’s fliers. Hill then backed off before going for another run, and improved further to extend his advantage.
That was just as well, because Turkington and Sutton then set laps that were quicker than Hill’s earlier time.
“I’m over the moon, especially in the circumstances,” said the diminutive Kentishman.
“The gearbox was out of the car 20 minutes before the session, and it was a bit doom and gloom.
Jake Hill, MB Motorsport BMW 330e M Sport
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
“I had a fantastic car from FP1 and it felt amazing, and I was really annoyed because I lost pretty much all of FP2 – I felt I was on the back foot before qualifying, but my car crew got me back out.
“This one’s for them – thanks to West Surrey and my engineer Craig [Porley].”
Turkington set the theoretical fastest…
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