NAPA Racing UK's Dan Cammish set the quickest lap time in the opening Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship free practice session at Donington Park, before immediately crashing out and bringing FP1 to a premature end.

The Ford Focus racer clocked the fastest run of the Grand Prix circuit – more than four tenths ahead of the chasing pack – with just a few minutes to go but then had a substantial shunt at McLean's on the following lap.

So, it was a bitter-sweet run for Cammish as he once again proved the pace in his Motorbase Performance-run machine, but significant damage to the rear of the car will have left a shadow over his chances of running for the remainder of the weekend.

It was a difficult session for another championship contender as the rear-left wheel of Tom Ingram's EXCELR8 Motorsport-run Hyundai failed and left his car at the Old Hairpin – immediately ending the reigning champion's run.

"The bit that is supposed to be connected, the wheel, failed," confirmed Ingram. "We’ve had a hub failure or something but we’ve got to go through it and find out. I turned into the Old Hairpin and discovered that there was nothing on the left rear corner, and I find that pivotal to lap time.

“We don’t know if there is damage elsewhere. Firstly, we need to work out what the failure is and secondly what caused it so that we and any of the other cars don’t have a similar issue, and then obviously set about fixing it as soon as possible so that we’re out for FP2.”

An earlier incident involving the CarStore Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall of Mikey Doble saw the young rookie spin off at turn 1, which brought about the first red flag period.

"Hopefully we’ll get the issued fixed and get straight back out for FP2," said Doble. "Luckily the run off there managed to take a lot of the speed out, meaning I didn’t hit the barriers too hard.

"Credit to the guys as Car Store Power Maxed Racing, the reliability has been top notch in our cars this year and it’s really showing with me and Andrew [Watson] being P1 and P2 in the Jack Sears Trophy standings, it does reward consistency. I’d rather this happen in FP1 rather than Race One where it messes up the rest of our day but the weekend is still long so."

A particularly wild session ended with Cammish on top, ahead of Tom Chilton (BRISTOL STREET MOTORS with EXCELR8), Ash Sutton (NAPA Racing UK), Ricky Collard (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK) and Colin Turkington (Team BMW).

The top ten times were rounded out by Rory Butcher (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK), Sam Osborne (NAPA Racing UK), Aron Taylor-Smith (CarStore Power Maxed Racing), Jake Hill and George Gamble (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK).

2023 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship – FP1 – Donington Park GP