Andy Priaulx has taken pole position on his return to the BTCC at Brands Hatch in an exciting session with the top eighteen separated by less than a second.
The session became split into two halves after a red flag for Martin Depper’s Honda Civic which lost a wheel and became stranded.
Several drivers also had near misses with the barriers after trips through the gravel, including one incident where Gordon Shedden slid through paddock hill bend gravel trap only to nearly collide with his team mate as he came back on track!
Early in the session, the three WSR run BMW’s had held the first three spots on the grid but team BMR came on strong later on and secured the next three spots behind Priaulx in the order Smith, Plato and Turkington with the three of them only fractions of a second apart. Behind the BMR train is Rob Collard who has looked much more comfortable so far this weekend than he has during some of the previous seasons. Jack Goff again beat his team mate Andrew Jordan with Goff in sixth to Jordan’s tenth.
Gordon Shedden is the first of the Hondas in seventh and having promised he’d be quick earlier in the day, he’ll probably be disappointed although he is only around 2 tenths off pole. His team mate Matt Neal is eleventh and once again off the pace of his team mate as happened several times last season.
Sam Tordoff managed to hang on to eighth, he’ll be disappointed at being bumped down from third earlier in the session. Ninth was Tom Ingram in his brand new Toyota Avensis.
Behind them came Morgan, Austin, Newsham. Moffat and Abbott With the exception of Moffat all had been in the top ten earlier in the day and are likely to be disappointed.
AMD Tuning.com’s Mike Bushell was next up in eighteenth in his Ford Focus. He had been quick in testing but couldn’t quite get a fast enough lap today although he is under a second off pole.
Warren Scott was unable to take part in the session after badly damaging his Team BMR VW CC and will be starting at the opposite end of the grid to his team mates tomorrow.
The new Infiniti managed twenty fourth but having only just been completed in the week before the event, the team are treating this first weekend as more of a test session. They should be up to full strength with two cars at Donington.
Full times are available from TSL-timing.com
The first race tomorrow starts at 11:47am and if you fancy spending Easter Sunday watching some great racing, tickets are available on the gate at Brands Hatch.
If you’re unable to head down, all races will be shown live on itv4 and we’ll also be reporting on the three races during the day. By Marc Waller
