BTCC Snetterton: Colin Turkington leads BMR top three in qualifying

The trio of Volkswagen CCs were at the sharp end throughout practice and it was 2014 champion Turkington who prevailed in qualifying to lead a Team BMR 1-2-3.

The Northern Irishman's best of 1m56.047s toppled Smith's early-session benchmark and handed Turkington a 14th career pole.

Smith shaved one-hundredth of a second off his own personal best but wound up 0.027s slower than the poleman, although he was 0.071s faster than Plato.

Practice pacesetter Andrew Jordan ended up fourth, matching his best qualifying performance of the season as he lapped 0.003s faster than the lead Honda of Matt Neal.

The same gap split Neal and Croft race winner Andy Priaulx in sixth, with just two tenths of a second covering the lead half-dozen over the near-two-minute lap.

Jack Goff looked poised to improve late on in the second MG with the best first sector of the session, but he made a mistake at the Esses and ran wide, ending up seventh.

Sam Tordoff and Rob Collard joined WSR BMW team-mate Priaulx in the top 10, sandwiching ninth-placed Tom Ingram.

It was a disastrous session for championship leader Gordon Shedden, who suffered a power-steering failure.

The Scot was mired in 16th with 75kg of ballast aboard his Civic Type-R, 0.8s off the pace and six-tenths slower than team-mate Neal.

Mat Jackson was the best-placed Motorbase driver on the team's return to the series, qualifying 14th with his new team-mate James Cole 20th.

The returning Robb Holland took 24th in Simon Belcher's Toyota Avensis, with Alex Martin's Team Parker Racing stand-in Barry Horne to start 25th on his BTCC debut.

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