Jackson snatches pole on drying track

The 26-year-old Englishman came out on top in what became a seven-minute shoot-out at the track following a red flag for Martyn Bell's slide into the gravel at Paddock Hill Bend.

Having sat at the top of the timesheets earlier in the session, the BMW Dealer Team UK driver knocked champion Fabrizio Giovanardi off the top spot with three minutes to go, and then improved his time further to grab pole with a 49.348 second lap.

His position was made secure when Michael Doyle bogged his In-Tune Racing Honda down in exactly the same place that Bell had gone off, forcing another red flag and an early end to the session.

Jackson's pole, ahead of Giovanardi, continued the great form shown by most of the BMW contingent in practice, with morning pace-setter Colin Turkington heading the second row in his WSR-run car.

SEAT team-mates Darren Turner and Jason Plato dominated the proceedings in the wet weather in which the session began, but the red flags for Bell's accident eroded the advantage of the Leon TDIs as the rest of the field had extra time to switch from wet tyres to slicks on a drying track.

Plato ended up fourth on the grid with Turner sixth behind Vauxhall's Tom Onslow-Cole. Gordon Shedden and Tom Chilton put their Team Dynamics Hondas seventh and ninth, sandwiching Steven Kane's Motorbase BMW.

Kane had earlier fallen foul of the rulemakers as he missed a call to stop at the weighbridge and had all his times from the first 19 minutes disallowed. It hardly mattered though, with the track drying to the end.

Matt Neal qualified tenth. The two-time champion lost time in the pits while the Vauxhall mechanics repaired a damaged front bumper.

Pos  Driver               Car           Time     Gap
 1.  Mat Jackson          BMW         49.348
 2.  Fabrizio Giovanardi  Vauxhall    49.367  +0.019
 3.  Colin Turkington     BMW         49.471  +0.104
 4.  Jason Plato          SEAT        49.511  +0.123
 5.  Tom Onslow-Cole      Vauxhall    49.565  +0.163
 6.  Darren Turner        SEAT        49.632  +0.217
 7.  Gordon Shedden       Honda       49.751  +0.284
 8.  Steven Kane          BMW         49.767  +0.403
 9.  Tom Chilton          Honda       49.912  +0.419
10.  Matt Neal            Vauxhall    49.958  +0.564
11.  Stephen Jelley       BMW         50.009  +0.610
12.  Matt Allison         Chevrolet   50.024  +0.676
13.  Rob Collard          BMW         50.085  +0.737
14.  Andrew Jordan        Honda       50.225  +0.877
15.  Adam Jones           SEAT        50.449  +1.101
16.  Chris Stockton       Lexus       50.465  +1.117
17.  Mike Jordan          Honda       50.468  +1.138
18.  John George          Honda       51.602  +2.120
19.  Erkut Kizilirmak     Vauxhall    51.869  +2.254
20.  Harry Vaulkhard      Chevrolet   52.576  +2.521
21.  Stuart Oliver        Lexus       52.826  +3.228
22.  Jason Hughes         Honda       54.195  +3.478
23.  Alan Taylor          Honda       54.448  +4.847
24.  Martyn Bell          Vauxhall    55.844  +5.100
25.  Michael Doyle        Honda       55.844  +6.496