Rockingham BTCC: Motorbase's Mat Jackson gets first pole since 2009

The 34-year-old beat Aron Smith in a battle between two unballasted cars to clinch his third career pole and his first-ever with the Motorbase team.

Several drivers had a spell at the top of the times in a busy session, Team BMR's Jason Plato first of all with a 1m22.426s.

That was never likely to be enough for pole though, and in the 20 minutes between the points leader setting that time and the end of the session Tom Ingram, Jack Goff and Aron Smith also hit the summit before Jackson's 1m22.087s edged the Volkswagen CC driver by 0.050 seconds.

Derek Palmer Jr put his Support our Paras Racing Infiniti Q50 into the gravel at Tarzan and brought out the red flags with just three minutes on the clock, setting up a five-minute shootout for pole.

Jackson lost top spot in a similar scenario last time out at Knockhill, but there was to be no late drama for the Ford Focus driver on this occasion - though Gordon Shedden grabbed third in his Honda on his very last lap.

Since returning to the championship in 2012 MG has been on pole on each of its three visits to Rockingham, but had to make do with a career-best qualifying result of fourth for Jack Goff.

The Snetterton race winner was three-thousandths slower than Shedden and less than a tenth ahead of Ingram, who matches his own best starting position with fifth.

Plato failed to improve his time in the second half of the session but still managed an impressive sixth with 75kgs of ballast on his VW, just ahead of the second Honda of Matt Neal.

In a session littered with breakthrough results Aiden Moffat, fresh from his maiden podium on home soil at Knockhill, secured eighth in his Laser Tools-badged Mercedes A-Class thanks to a fine effort late on.

Colin Turkington had a spin at Chapman and fell as low as 15th but improved to ninth by the end of the session - one place better than practice pacesetter Andrew Jordan managed in the second MG.

QUALIFYING RESULTS: