Rich Energy BTC Racing's Josh Cook admitted qualifying 'was by no means easy' despite romping to pole position for Sunday's opening British Touring C✃ar Championship race at Thruxton.

The Honda 𓂃driver produced a 1'15.310s lap in the dying minutes of qualifying, which was good enough to deny BMW's Jake Hill by just 0.077s around the Hampshire circuit.

The Cook/BTC Racing Honda looked a potent combination from the word go in FP1, but the Thruxton maestro said he 'lost the sweet spot of the balance' du🐎ring the early stages of q🐷ualifying.

"That qual🌄ifying was by no means easy," Cook told mahbx.com. "FP1 and FP2 was good, but we lost a bit of the sweet spot of the balan♊ce at the start of qualifying. I was struggling.

"We made another cou🐷ple of changes for the second run, which isn’t something you normally want to do in qualifying. We dialled a few extra bits in the car. It was lively, but we hung onto it and ℱthere was a lap in it.

"It’s always a bit sweeter♔ when you’ve had to work a bit harder for it. I’m happy for me and I’m happy for the team."

The 30-year old did jump to the top of the timesheets at the start of qualifying, but that lap was taken away from him for a track limit infringement. That mea🎃nt Cook saved his best effort until last, which saw him take his third pole position in the series.

As virtue of sitting second in the points standings, Cook impressively produced that lap with the bare minimum of hybrid deployment, with only championship leader Tom Ingram having less power to deploy than the BTC Honda drive🌳r. Ingram, incidentally, qualified in eighth position.

"I’m not really sure why (th♌ey deleted my lap). I can only assume it was a track limits deletion. That’s 🌼why they do it," Cook continued.

"We don’t work on single lap pace and that’s it, we make sure we’ve got a good race car because there’♔s a lot more points on a Sunday than there is on a Saturday! All we need to is to be in the mix on a Saturday. I’m mega pleased with pole.

"We’ve g💖iven ourselves the best chance but it doesn’t mean anything come Sunday. We need to convert that and make sure we score strong points."