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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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