Sam Tordoff has taken his second pole in as many meetings at Rockingham but a possible one-two on the grid was spoilt for MG by Ebay Motors Colin Turkington.
The fog that had covered the circuit earlier in the day had fully cleared by the time the session got underway. Tordoff took pole by nearly half a second in the end but Turkington snatched second on the grid by twelve hundredths of a second from Plato which won’t impress the KX Tesco Fuel save MG driver with his vocal protestations about Turkington’s rear wheel drive BMW. Shedden threw his Honda round Rockingham to claim fourth, ahead of Andrew Jordan who had been second in both sessions up until now. Adam Morgan was sixth just under eight tenths off pole. Marc Hynes put his MG in the top ten in seventh. Alain Menu was the fastest Chrome Restart racing VW in eighth with his team mates, Smith, Goff and Scott, 
fourteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth respectively. Ninth was Matt Neal. Regularly on two wheels throughout the session, the times didn’t come suggesting that maybe that wasn’t the fastest way round the track! Mat Jackson rounded out the top ten in his Airwaves Racing Focus just ahead of his team mate Giovanardi. Tom Ingram was twelfth and was probably hoping for better with Austin behind him in his Exocet Racing Audi also disappointed. Not as disappointed as his team mate Hunter Abbott who only completed four laps due to car trouble and ended up last. Also disappointed were Turkington’s Ebay team mates Foster and Collard who ended up fifthteenth and sixteenth respectively. If Turkington taking second is evidence of a rear wheel drive advantage than surely the performance of the other rear wheel drive cars is a strong case for the defence with Austin the highest of the rest of the rear wheel drive field in thirteenth.
Race one gets underway tomorrow at 11:37am with action here on the track from 9:40am. Tickets are available on the gate or the days racing will be shown live on ITV4 as usual.
Full times are on TSL timing as usual By Marc Waller
