Donington Park BTCC: Colin Turkington takes his first pole for BMR
British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington took his first pole position for Team BMR by edging an incredibly close qualifying session at Donington Park
The Volkswagen CC driver took advantage of team-mate Jason Plato's struggle to string together a complete lap to nick pole on a 1m09.483s.
That was enough to shade Honda's Gordon Shedden by 0.059 seconds, with the Scot splitting Turkington and Plato with his last flying lap.
Practice suggested Plato, who is carrying no ballast at this stage of the weekend, would breeze to pole position after he comfortably topped both sessions.
But as Turkington, who has 33kg of ballast, and Shedden (39kg) found big gains in the qualifying session Plato was unable to complete a perfect lap.
The double champion either set purple sectors or all but matched his best split times on a number of laps as qualifying drew to a close, but could not improve on the 1m09.552s that had him top of the pile in the first half of the session.
The lead trio was half a second clear of the next group, which was again separated by very little.
Adam Morgan came out on top of that scrap in his Ciceley Racing Mercedes with the fourth-best time, as three tenths separated him and joint points leader Jack Goff in 13th.
Goff's MG team-mate Andrew Jordan had struggled for balance in the high-speed corners in practice and suffered two big spins in qualifying at the Old Hairpin, where Goff had his own big moment in the same session.
The 2013 champion managed to qualify fifth despite his dramas, ahead of the impressive Josh Cook, who starred in his Power Maxed Racing Chevrolet Cruze.
Neal, who shares the series points lead with Goff, put in a sterling effort to go seventh despite carrying 66kgs in his Civic Type-R, just beating the straightline speed-lacking WSR BMW of Sam Tordoff.
Aiden Moffat made it two Ciceley-built Mercedes A-Classes in the top 10 as the Laser Tools Racing man ended up ninth, just ahead of the second PMR Cruze of Dave Newsham.
Aron Smith, who bagged two podiums at Brands, was 11th quickest despite not finishing the session thanks to a mechanical problem, while a technical issue also meant Brands Hatch pole-winner Andy Priaulx had a disastrous session.
The three-time world champion was only 23rd after suffering a mechanical failure that brought out the red flags just over halfway through qualifying.
STARTING GRID:
Pos | Driver | Team | Car | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Colin Turkington | Team BMR | Volkswagen | 1m09.483s | - |
2 | Gordon Shedden | Honda | Honda | 1m09.539s | 0.056s |
3 | Jason Plato | Team BMR | Volkswagen | 1m09.552s | 0.069s |
4 | Adam Morgan | Ciceley Racing | Mercedes | 1m10.021s | 0.538s |
5 | Andrew Jordan | MG | MG | 1m10.029s | 0.546s |
6 | Josh Cook | Power Maxed | Chevrolet | 1m10.119s | 0.636s |
7 | Matt Neal | Honda | Honda | 1m10.179s | 0.696s |
8 | Sam Tordoff | WSR | BMW | 1m10.193s | 0.710s |
9 | Aiden Moffat | Aiden Moffat Racing | Mercedes | 1m10.288s | 0.805s |
10 | Dave Newsham | Power Maxed | Chevrolet | 1m10.337s | 0.854s |
11 | Aron Taylor-Smith | Team BMR | Volkswagen | 1m10.365s | 0.882s |
12 | Rob Austin | Rob Austin Racing | Audi | 1m10.378s | 0.895s |
13 | Jack Goff | MG | MG | 1m10.378s | 0.895s |
14 | Mike Bushell | AmD | Ford | 1m10.527s | 1.044s |
15 | Warren Scott | Team BMR | Volkswagen | 1m10.543s | 1.060s |
16 | Tom Ingram | Speedworks Motorsport | Toyota | 1m10.580s | 1.097s |
17 | Jeff Smith | Eurotech | Honda | 1m10.614s | 1.131s |
18 | Martin Depper | Eurotech | Honda | 1m10.652s | 1.169s |
19 | Rob Collard | WSR | BMW | 1m10.823s | 1.340s |
20 | Alex Martin | Team Parker | Ford | 1m10.978s | 1.495s |
21 | Hunter Abbott | Rob Austin Racing | Audi | 1m11.013s | 1.530s |
22 | Simon Belcher | Handy Motorsport | Toyota | 1m11.374s | 1.891s |
23 | Andy Priaulx | WSR | BMW | 1m11.535s | 2.052s |
24 | Derek Palmer Jr. | Infiniti | Infiniti | 1m11.930s | 2.447s |
25 | Kieran Gallagher | Team Hard | Toyota | 1m12.065s | 2.582s |
26 | Andy Wilmot | Welch Motorsport | Proton | 1m12.508s | 3.025s |
27 | Stewart Lines | Houseman Racing | Toyota | 1m12.896s | 3.413s |
28 | Richard Hawken | Infiniti | Infiniti | 1m15.799s | 6.316s |
29 | Daniel Welch | Welch Motorsport | Proton | - | - |
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