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Qualifying report

Oulton Park BTCC: Turkington pips Tordoff to pole by 0.027s

Colin Turkington scored his second pole position of the BTCC season at Oulton Park, beating free practice pacesetter Sam Tordoff by three hundredths of a second.

Colin Turkington, WSR BMW

Colin Turkington, WSR BMW

JEP / Motorsport Images

Front-wheel-drive runners Tordoff and Dan Cammish had topped the two practice sessions but the rear-driven BMW 330i M Sport came to the fore early on in qualifying.

Less than 10 minutes into the half-hour session, Turkington posted a 1min25.825sec lap to take provisional first and his effort remained good enough to secure pole.

The points leader’s best result in practice was just eighth in the second run, but Turkington wound up 0.027s clear of Tordoff – the only other driver to break under the 1m25s barrier.

As the front-driven cars pitted early to cross their warm front tyres on to the rear of their cars, it was the WSR trio of Andrew Jordan, Turkington and Tom Oliphant who held the top three times early on.

But Cammish soon moved clear on his first flying run but a quick response from Turkington meant he edged 0.075s clear.

Honda driver Cammish responded on his next flier but again Turkington had an answer and set what would remain the session’s fastest lap despite carrying the maximum 54kg of success ballast.

AmD Tuning duo Rory Butcher and Tordoff did post the fastest first and second sectors of the day respectively, but could not string together the rest of the lap to truly threaten Turkington.

With under six minutes of qualifying remaining, Cammish posted a fastest first sector but carried too much speed into the chicane and ran wide so could not better third.

After a free practice crash with Matt Simpson – the latter unable to take part in qualifying due to the damage – Turkington’s teammate Andrew Jordan was short on running.

But he did go fourth fastest ahead of Butcher and Team Dynamics driver Matt Neal, with Oliphant ending up seventh.

Jason Plato had ended practice in fourth, but the Vauxhall driver slipped to eighth ahead of Tom Ingram and Jake Hill – both appearing to struggle with balance issues.

Chris Smiley was 11th for BTC Racing, but he will take a five-place grid drop as a legacy of his race three crash with Jack Goff in the last round at Croft.

The Subaru's lack of pace in practice carried through to qualifying as 2017 champion Ashley Sutton was only 14th  fastest ahead of Tom Chilton.

Josh Cook, who currently sits second in the standings, also fell foul and was only 22nd.

Qualifying results:

POS DRIVER TEAM CAR TIME GAP
1 Colin Turkington WSR BMW 1m25.825s -
2 Sam Tordoff AmD Tuning Honda 1m25.852s 0.027s
3 Dan Cammish Team Dynamics Honda 1m26.064s 0.239s
4 Andrew Jordan WSR BMW 1m26.111s 0.286s
5 Rory Butcher AmD Tuning Honda 1m26.215s 0.390s
6 Matt Neal Team Dynamics Honda 1m26.242s 0.417s
7 Tom Oliphant WSR BMW 1m26.318s 0.493s
8 Jason Plato Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall 1m26.391s 0.566s
9 Tom Ingram Speedworks Motorsport Toyota 1m26.449s 0.624s
10 Jake Hill Trade Price Cars Racing Audi 1m26.484s 0.659s
11 Chris Smiley BTC Racing Honda 1m26.520s 0.695s
12 Adam Morgan Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes 1m26.542s 0.717s
13 Ollie Jackson Motorbase Performance Ford 1m26.558s 0.733s
14 Ash Sutton BMR Racing Subaru 1m26.581s 0.756s
15 Tom Chilton Motorbase Performance Ford 1m26.612s 0.787s
16 Jack Goff Team Hard Volkswagen 1m26.728s 0.903s
17 Stephen Jelley Team Parker Racing BMW 1m26.753s 0.928s
18 Rob Collard Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall 1m26.867s 1.042s
19 Carl Boardley Team Hard Volkswagen 1m26.881s 1.056s
20 Aiden Moffat Laser Tools Racing Mercedes 1m26.882s 1.057s
21 Bobby Thompson Team Hard Volkswagen 1m26.999s 1.174s
22 Josh Cook BTC Racing Honda 1m27.057s 1.232s
23 Daniel Rowbottom Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes 1m27.201s 1.376s
24 Senna Proctor BMR Racing Subaru 1m27.208s 1.383s
25 Nicolas Hamilton Motorbase Performance Ford 1m27.276s 1.451s
26 Mark Blundell Trade Price Cars Racing Audi 1m27.499s 1.674s
27 Michael Crees Team Hard Volkswagen 1m27.757s 1.932s
28 Rob Smith Excelr8 Motorsport MG 1m27.780s 1.955s
29 Sam Osborne Excelr8 Motorsport MG 1m28.797s 2.972s

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