Tordoff on pole, front-driven cars excel in BTCC qualifying at Thruxton

The AmD Tuning driver earned his seventh series pole and backed up the form shown in the first visit to the circuit earlier in 2019, during which he broke the qualifying lap record.

An ultimate time of 1m15.876s meant Tordoff was 0.365s shy of his benchmark from earlier this year, but he still topped the times by 0.014s over free practice leader Jason Plato.

Tordoff went quickest early on as the front-wheel-drive cars came to the fore, beating provisional polesitter Adam Morgan who displayed a marked improvement in form following an overhaul to the Ciceley Motorsport engineering team.

Tordoff's team-mate Rory Butcher, currently third in the points, then went fastest overall before the Honda Civic Type Rs were split by the Toyota Corolla of Tom Ingram.

A few spots of rain quietened the session as drivers struggled to improve in any sector, but wind dried the track swiftly.

That allowed WSR driver Tom Oliphant to climb to second, 0.016s off Butcher.

Then, a personal best first and final sector combined with the absolute best second sector promoted Plato to first.

The Vauxhall Astra driver was the first person of the weekend to drop below the 1m15s barrier, as Cammish and Morgan completed an all-new top three.

Tordoff found a further 0.014s with an improved second sector to post his unbeaten 1m15.876s benchmark.

Butcher looked to make it an AmD 1-2 with a session best first sector, but he ran wide during the second sector and could not recover the time.

That left Plato second from Cammish and Morgan, with Josh Cook a late improver from 11th to fifth ahead of Butcher.

Oliphant was the quickest rear-wheel-drive runner as he delivered seventh in his BMW 330i M Sport, ahead of Ingram and Chris Smiley.

Plato's team-mate Rob Collard put the second Power Maxed Racing machine in 10th ahead of points leader Colin Turkington - entering the weekend with the maximum 54kg of success ballast.

Ashley Sutton was 12th ahead of final WSR driver Andrew Jordan - carrying the second heaviest 48kg ballast payload.

The Thruxton session was only the second qualifying of the year not to be interrupted by a red flag, although Matt Neal and Cook had to recover high-speed half spins.

Ex-Formula 1 driver Mark Blundell also tangelled with the MG 6 of Sam Osborne in the closing minutes.

The collision at the chicane resulted in a puncture for Blundell and a left-rear wheel failure for Osborne - they would up 26th and 30th respectively as a result.

Qualifying result