BTCC Thruxton: Aron Smith takes first pole in eventful qualifying

The Team BMR Volkswagen CC driver beat the Hondas of Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal by less than a tenth after a breathless seven-minute shootout for pole.

An off for Hunter Abbott at Goodwood brought out the red flag with less than a third of the session remaining, at which time Neal was on course for a first series pole since mid-2012 on a 1m16.969s.

But when the session resumed, the order changed multiple times at the top.

First, Dave Newsham leapt to second with an identical time to Neal, but he lost that for exceeding track limits and plummeted to 16th.

Adam Morgan then went quickest on a 1m16.802s before suffering the same fate as Newsham, but the Mercedes driver followed that up with a 1m16.916s to reclaim top spot.

He was then shuffled back to fourth as Smith, Shedden - who lost provisional pole himself earlier on with a track-limits infringement - and Neal improved.

Andy Priaulx ended up fifth having briefly held second in his WSR BMW, while Jason Plato was sixth in his BMR VW, 0.342s slower than Smith - and Colin Turkington only managed ninth in his CC.

Between the two Donington Park race winners were Jack Goff and Josh Cook, who lost out in the late reshuffle having occupied third and fifth before the red flag.

Rob Collard completed the top 10 ahead of Andrew Jordan, who appeared to misjudge an attempt to get back out for a late flier and failed to get across the line in time.

Ex-Formula 1 driver Martin Donnelly did not take part in qualifying after a power-steering failure caused him to crash his Infinity Q50 at the end of FP2, while Dan Welch was also absent.

The Abbott incident was not the only stoppage in the session, which was red-flagged just a few minutes in due to a heavy clash between Mike Bushell and Simon Belcher on the run from Allard to the Complex.

Bushell was exiting the pitlane as the Toyota came out of the first corner and as the Avensis moved across to take the racing line it made contact with the Ford Focus, which had passed the white line at the pitlane exit and was edging towards the middle of the track.

The result was two heavily damaged cars, a suspected injury for Bushell and a delay of almost half an hour before qualifying resumed.

Results to follow...