BTCC Brands Hatch: Oliphant heads WSR 1-2-3, Moffat caused red flag

The new for 2019 BMW 330i M Sport has been strong out of the box during testing and Andrew Jordan went fastest in the first practice session of the season earlier on Saturday.

But it was his team-mate Oliphant who came out on top in the second 40-minute run, setting a benchmark time of 48.475 seconds to beat Jordan and Colin Turkington.

Oliphant set the early pace as the first runner to post a sub 48-second lap before he was toppled by Jason Plato - finally showing the pace that Power Maxed Racing had been confident of finding from the Vauxhall Astra.

But Oliphant responded immediately to go back ahead of two-time BTCC champion Plato.

Then, at the halfway point, a small rain shower forced most runners to switch to the wet tyres.

But Mercedes A-Class driver Aidan Moffat was caught out at Paddock Hill Bend as he tried to scrub in new tyres, ending up in the gravel to cause a red flag with 10 minutes to go.

The track was reopened for a seven-minute shootout and a flurry of cars headed out.

It looked as though Plato would retain second ahead of Team Dynamics's Dan Cammish, given the conditions.

But the track came to the rear-wheel drive cars and so as the chequered flag was waved Jordan eclipsed Plato to move second on his final flying run with a time of 48.574s.

Turkington followed suit, with his 48.667s taking all three BMWs to the top positions.

Plato held onto fourth ahead of the quickest Motorbase Ford Focus RS of Tom Chilton, who is just two away from scoring his 1500th BTCC point.

Tom Ingram had a slow start to FP2, but in the final minutes he set a time good enough to take the new Toyota Corolla into sixth for Speedworks ahead of Jake Hill, Cammish and Chilton's team-mate Ollie Jackson.

AmD Tuning's Sam Tordoff, who broke the qualifying lap record for the Indy circuit during pre-season testing, rounded out the top 10.

The 2017 champion Ash Sutton was 12th in his Subaru Levorg GT for Team BMR.

Matt Neal took the second Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R to 16th ahead of Plato's Astra team-mate Rob Collard.

Ahead of his series debut, 1992 Le Mans winner Mark Blundell finished the final practice session in 22nd.

Nic Hamilton ended up 26th, while Moffat was not able to resume running after his off so did not improve on his 28th-place effort.

FP2 results

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Gap	Laps
1	Tom Oliphant	WSR	BMW	48.475s	34
2	Andrew Jordan	WSR	BMW	0.099s	23
3	Colin Turkington	WSR	BMW	0.192s	30
4	Jason Plato	Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall	0.399s	23
5	Tom Chilton	Motorbase Performance	Ford	0.483s	19
6	Tom Ingram	Speedworks Motorsport	Toyota	0.505s	21
7	Jake Hill	Trade Price Cars Racing	Audi	0.516s	27
8	Dan Cammish	Team Dynamics	Honda	0.606s	23
9	Ollie Jackson	Motorbase Performance	Ford	0.654s	25
10	Sam Tordoff	AmD Tuning	Honda	0.671s	23
11	Chris Smiley	BTC Racing	Honda	0.706s	18
12	Ash Sutton	BMR Racing	Subaru	0.717s	22
13	Stephen Jelley	Team Parker Racing	BMW	0.786s	22
14	Matt Simpson	Simpson Racing	Honda	0.831s	30
15	Adam Morgan	Ciceley Motorsport	Mercedes	0.867s	28
16	Matt Neal	Team Dynamics	Honda	0.871s	26
17	Rob Collard	Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall	0.883s	28
18	Rory Butcher	AmD Tuning	Honda	0.904s	20
19	Jack Goff	Team Hard	Volkswagen	0.942s	26
20	Senna Proctor	BMR Racing	Subaru	0.989s	26
21	Carl Boardley	Team Hard	Volkswagen	1.059s	25
22	Mark Blundell	Trade Price Cars Racing	Audi	1.285s	17
23	Rob Smith	Excelr8 Motorsport	MG	1.375s	33
24	Bobby Thompson	Team Hard	Volkswagen	1.501s	16
25	Michael Crees	Team Hard	Volkswagen	1.576s	19
26	Nicolas Hamilton	Motorbase Performance	Ford	1.611s	22
27	Daniel Rowbottom	Ciceley Motorsport	Mercedes	1.827s	24
28	Aiden Moffat	Laser Tools Racing	Mercedes	2.016s	19
29	Sam Osborne	Excelr8 Motorsport	MG	2.077s	32
30	Josh Cook	BTC Racing	Honda	4.708s	11