Aon Ford team-mates Tom Onslow-Cole and Tom Chilton were 1-2 in an incident-filled second Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship practice session at Brands Hatch.

Onslow-Cole topped the timesheets with a late lap of 1m32.430s around Brands’ awesome Grand Prix circuit to just pip long-time pace-setter Chilton who, stuck in traffic, was unable to respond. Their LPG turbo-engined Focuses, though, are clearly well suited to the Brands GP lay-out and seem to be the cars to beat going into this afternoon’s qualifying session at 3.40pm.

However, the rest were much closer to ultimate pace this time, after Chilton had been more than half a second clear of the field in this morning’s first session. Matt Neal’s Honda Racing Team Honda Civic was third, just 0.169s off Onslow-Cole’s fastest time, and James Nash was fourth, just a further 0.090s behind in his Uniq Racing with 888 Vauxhall Vectra.

Neal’s team-mate Gordon Shedden and Paul O’Neill, in his Sunshine.co.uk with Tech-Speed Honda Integra were next up. After problems with his Silverline Chevrolet Cruze this morning, championship leader Jason Plato, who seemed to be constantly in and out of the pit lane, completed the top ten thanks to a couple of fast laps at the end of the session, but was at least within a second of the top time.

The session needed to be halted after ten minutes so marshals could retrieve the WSR BMW of Andy Neate which had spun backwards off the circuit into a gravel trap entering Clark Curve. Andrew Jordan had earlier been lucky to survive a lurid slide through the same gravel trap, but kept on going in his Pirtek Racing Vectra to wind up seventh overall – another strong showing after being second this morning.

But David Pinkney, third in session one, was this time back in 11th. After spins at Graham Hill Bend his session came to an abrupt halt when his Pinkney Motorsport Vectra’s gearbox broke along Cooper Straight, forcing him to pull off the track immediately.

There were also woes for Mat Jackson who ground to a halt exiting Westfield Bend with an engine sensor fault on his Airwaves BMW and, just as it appeared he was getting into his stride, he was resigned to 12th overall. That was still two places better than team-mate Steven Kane who was 14th as he worked to hone his car’s set-up after he’d also lost valuable track time this morning.