BTCC Oulton Park: Honda driver Matt Simpson scores first BTCC pole

The 36-year-old, who had topped the second free practice session, carried that form into the 30-minute timed session and banked his lap with his first run.

He ended up 0.243s clear of the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus of Sam Tordoff.

"This is an amazing feeling," said Simpson, who first raced in the BTCC in 2016.

"It is something I have been dreaming about since I joined the British Touring Car Championship and I can't thank the team enough.

"The car was just superb."

Simpson slid wide at the Island hairpin on his second run, although no one would eclipse his earlier time.

"I was jolly glad that I managed to get it back onto the circuit without hitting anything too solid," said Simpson.

"We were running a softer brake because I thought it had better feel, but we were not sure if it would last for two runs, and it just wore out and I just lost the [use of the] brake pedal."

Behind Tordoff, his team-mate Tom Chilton was third in his Focus. He shared row two with the WSR BMW 125i M Sport of Andrew Jordan, who has recovered from the illness which ruled hom out of the last race at the previous round.

The top four qualifiers were running without championship success ballast.

The highest-placed racer with success ballast was Matt Neal in one of the two new generation Honda Civic Type Rs run by Team Dynamics.

Neal put the car in fifth spot with 33kg of extra weight, and will share the third row with Jack Goff's older Eurotech Honda Civic Type R, which was fitted with 48kg of success ballast.

The top 10 is rounded out by the Goff's team-mate Brett Smith, the Motorbase Ford of James Cole, WSR BMW man Colin Turkington and Ciceley Mercedes driver Tom Oliphant.

The points leader coming into the meeting, Oliphant's team-mate Adam Morgan, struggled with the 75kg of success ballast on his Mercedes-Benz A-Class and that restricted him to 19th.

Second in the points, Josh Cook, also had issues with his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra.

He had 66kg of extra weight, and made suspension tweaks midway through the 30-minute session, which left him down in 20th spot.

Qualifying result