Aron Smith of Chrome edition Restart racing took the top spot as the second BTCC meeting of the year got underway at Donington Park with a laptime of 1:10.041. This was quicker than pole last year.
Gordon Shedden’s Honda Tourer was second 0.174 behind. Third was Colin Turkington continuing his excellent start to the season, 0.217 behind Smith.
31 cars are present at Donington for the first time this year but Daniel Welch was unable to do a time as a gearbox fault wasn’t able to be fixed in time, he is due out in the second session. Lea Wood also had problems and only got out towards the end of the session for a couple of slow laps.
Matt Neal was fourth in the other Honda Yuasa Racing Civic Tourer and Marc Hynes impressed in fifth as the first of the MG’s in his Quantel Bifold MG6. He was followed by Plato and Tordoff in the Tesco sponsored cars. Jack Goff was an excellent eighth in his Vauxhall Insignia beating team mate Alain Menu into ninth in his VW CC. Rounding out the top ten was Adam Morgan in the Wix Racing Mercedes A class.
2013 Champion Andrew Jordan could only manage twelfth, beaten as well by James Cole’s Untied Autosports Toyota Avensis, taking his best position of the year so far. Rob Collard was thirteenth in the Ebay motors car and our Behind the scenes team AMD Tuning were fourteenth with Dave Newsham. Warren Scott was fifthteenth meaning all the Chrome Edition restart Racing cars were in the top half of the field. He also beat Fabrizio Giovinardi who was only sixteenth, the first of the Motorbase cars, with the team still appearing to have not got on top of their issues.
It was again close with the top thirteen separated by less than a second.
For a full list of time see TSL Timing as usual. By Marc Waller
