WSR’s Daryl De Leon narrowly missed out on a podium finish with a superb recovery drive in the final Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Brands Hatch (9/10 May).
The 20-year-old Anglo-Filipino, who started the opening race from the front row of the grid in his BMW 330i M Sport, closed the event with a recovering fourth-place finish to score his best result of 2026 and cement his best weekend points total of the year, too.
The reigning Jack Sears Trophy champion set the third-best lap in Race 1 and the second-quickest time in Race 3, but also suffered contact on multiple occasions and was unable to maximise his 3 Series’ speed as cold and wet conditions blighted the day’s action.
Starting 10th in the day’s final race, the Cambridgeshire-based driver carefully moved through the field during the opening 20 laps and closed to within one second of the final podium spot towards the finish.
Having started Race 1 from second spot, contact with another driver would drop him down the order to an eventual 11th-place finish. He was tenth in Race 2 on the medium-compound Goodyear tyre that all drivers had to use once.
Team-mate Charles Rainford lay only 15th after a lap of the opening race, having started on the medium tyre, but drove superbly to recover to ninth by the chequered flag; a result that briefly put him at the head of the Independent Drivers’ points table.
He challenged for a podium in the slippery Race 2 conditions until contact saw him into the gravel at Druids hairpin and caused a red flag and an early finish to proceedings.
Incredible teamwork by the WSR mechanics helped repair his BMW in double-quick time, and the Horsham driver was back on the grid for Race 3, in which he finished 13th.
Daryl De Leon: “What a day it was. I started on the front row and unfortunately the weather hindered my performance in Race 1. I don’t want to be the guy who makes excuses, but the greasy conditions don’t suit our car. I got too much wheelspin off the line and a lock-up into Druids, but still I finished 11th. It’s not the way I wanted it to go, but I’ll take it.
"I was pretty happy with Race 2, from 11th on the grid on medium tyres, but again the crazy rain made conditions sketchy for us. It was one of those races where there was so much going on, but I finished 10th.
"In a fully dry Race 3 I came from 10th to fourth, chasing down a podium, but I ran out of laps and boost. I’m gutted not to get on the podium, but when you think about the conditions and how they hurt rear-wheel-drive cars, we’ll take what we achieved forwards for Snetterton.”
Charles Rainford: “The stars of the show were my amazing #99 crew at WSR, who helped get me on track for Race 3. It’d been a challenging day. We’ve shown some great pace and went forwards on the medium tyre and was battling for a podium on a wet track on slicks until I was turned around late on and took a lot of damage.
"The team worked so hard and I’m very thankful to them for getting me out, but ultimately something was damaged and I didn’t have enough grip coming out of the corners. I’ve lost a few places in the championship, but the positive is that I go to Snetterton with a full boost allocation as a result, so watch this space.”
Dick Bennetts, Team Principal: “If we’d had hot temperatures and dry conditions for the races, like on Saturday, I’m certain we’d have had a couple of podiums at the very least, but you can never predict the weather in this country. It’d been a real battle on track, and we came away from Race 2 pretty battered and bruised, but the way everyone pulled together to get both cars out for Race 3 was an exceptional show of teamwork. Daryl’s best laps in two of the three races were within a few hundredths of a second of the overall fastest and he drove very well to just miss the podium in Race 3. We’ll head back to HQ and see what we need to do for Snetterton.”
