Returning Ford squad Motorbase tops BTCC tyre test at Snetterton

The Ford Focus driver jumped to the top of the times in the final half an hour of the full-day test, setting a best lap of 1m57.216s with medium tyres on his EcoBoost-powered machine.

That put him 0.173 seconds clear of MG's Andrew Jordan, who had led most of the afternoon session in the sole Triple Eight-run MG6 GT.

Team BMR driver Colin Turkington led Jordan in the morning in his Volkswagen CC, and wound up third quickest as both drivers improved their times while evaluating some potential 2016 compounds for Dunlop in the afternoon.

The 2014 champion was 0.4s slower than Jackson and just 0.015s ahead of the WSR BMW of Andy Priaulx, who improved right at the end of the session.

The three-time world champion's best time came on the current-spec soft tyres, with the 125i M Sport not quicker when it tried the updated compound.

Honda's Matt Neal briefly hit the top of the timesheets in the afternoon on a set of the alternative soft tyres, but dropped to seventh by the end of the day, behind Aron Smith and Tom Ingram (on 2015 mediums).

Jason Plato was eighth and understood to be set to perform a qualifying attempt on the experimental 2016 softs, but was robbed of the opportunity with a power-steering failure.

In addition to those assessing some of Dunlop's revised soft-compound tyres, Josh Cook was picked to evaluate the Thruxton-specification hard tyre as another potential 2016 replacement in his Power Maxed Racing Chevrolet Cruze.

Twenty-three cars took part in the test, with Robb Holland getting his first run in the Handy Motorsport Toyota Avensis and Tony Gilham driving Team Hard's similar car. They ended up 22nd and 23rd.