The 22-year-old Scot whisked his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback across the North Yorkshire circuit with a lap simply 0.117 seconds slower than the 2023 pole time in the course of the morning session.
That effort left him 0.072s away from Jake Hill, last week’s Brands test-topper rising second quickest this time on the wheel of his West Surrey Racing-run BMW 330e M Sport.
Though the gentle tyre is not going to be used at this July’s Croft race weekend, Autosport understands that Pearson set his time on this compound of the Goodyear rubber.
Pearson, who is anticipated to be a number one contender within the title combat for the Jack Sears Trophy sub-division, has extra to be taught than Excelr8 workforce leaders Tom Ingram and Tom Chilton, who had been the one two drivers the workforce took to its three-day non-public take a look at at Anglesey final month.
“Our testing programme’s going very well,” stated Pearson.
“Some say it’s about high quality over amount. We haven’t finished an enormous quantity of laps always, however finally we’ve bought from all three days that we’ve finished to date precisely what we wished to.
“The place [at Croft] appears fairly, however we really achieved greater than what we got down to.
“It’s not about trying on the leaderboard – it’s about what I acquire out of the times confidence-wise, and what we’re doing to the automotive set-up.”
Ronan Pearson, Bristol Road Motors
Photograph by: JEP
Behind Hill, the sister WSR BMW of Colin Turkington was third quickest, regardless of an off exiting the chicane, adopted by the Alliance Racing Ford Focus trio of Dan Cammish, reigning champion Ash Sutton, and Dan Rowbottom.
The afternoon session was moist, and was comfortably topped by Sutton to the tune of 0.251s over Rowbottom on a circuit the place the Fords dominated in 2023.
Hill had an early-session incident at Sunny the place he made mild contact with the barrier, though he did return to the monitor a few hours later.
There was one other pink flag in a while when Chris Smiley took a high-speed journey into the cornfield on the exit of the Jim Clark Esses in his Restart Racing Cupra, the workforce’s pair of vehicles sitting out many of the dry operating with mechanical points.
One other in mechanical woes was 2022 champion Ingram, who had two separate issues and didn’t file a time within the dry, though this was sorted in time for him to go fourth quickest within the moist.
Solely Rob Huff tried a run on slick tyres in the direction of the top of the afternoon session, after he, Josh Prepare dinner and Andrew Watson had made it a Speedworks Motorsport Toyota 8-9-10 within the morning behind seventh-placed Chilton.
Prepare dinner was sidelined by this level with a broken radiator from an off.
In contrast to at Manufacturers, the Toyotas and BMWs ran at Croft with the turbo enhance facility that may mix with hybrid to double the surge when utilized in 2024.