Team BMR’s Aron Smith scorched a late flying lap during a fast and furious qualifying session at Thruxton to claim his first ever Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship pole position.
The lap set by the ballast-free VW was enough to halt Honda’s charge to a front row clean sweep with Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal missing out by an incredibly close 0.020s and 0.073s respectively. The gaps throughout the order were extremely tight with the top 16 cars separated by less than a second.
The truncated session was punctuated by two accidents and number of fastest laps which were subsequently removed by the stewards for track limits infringements.
The first of those incidents involved the Ford Focus of Mike Bushell and Toyota Avensis of Simon Belcher, which led to high speed contact. The two cars touched as Bushell’s AmD machine left the pitlane with Belcher coming past on another timed flyer – both cars had nowhere to go and left the circuit before hitting the barrier at some force.
A lengthy stoppage followed to remove the stricken cars and repair the barriers, but more importantly to allow the medical team to attend to the drivers. Unfortunately for Bushell he looks to have suffered from a suspected broken left femur and has been taken to nearby Southampton hospital. It should be noted that Mike was conscious and fully responsive following the unfortunate incident – more news will follow.
A further accident involving the Audi A4 of Hunter Abbott stopped the session for a second time late on, which came at a time of high drama.
Shedden held provisional pole position for a brief period before Adam Morgan’s Mercedes and Dave Newsham’s Chevrolet both got the jump on the Honda. Incredibly all three cars – plus several others – had their respective lap times removed after jumping across the kerbs at the final chicane. This left Neal back in top spot but there was still just enough time for a flurry of changes to occur in the top order.
It was Smith’s moment to come out of the shadow of his two champion team-mates and the BTCC race-winner duly obliged with a stellar lap to take a maiden pole position. Shedden eventually made it into second ahead of Neal, while Morgan did well to immediately bounce back from his discounted lap with another tour that left him in fourth.
Andy Priaulx continued his and West Surrey Racing’s productive day with fifth place on the grid – the Guernseyman believing he has a much better race car than his one-lap pace showed. This should bode well for the Triple World Champion and will also provide enocuragement to his WSR team-mates Rob Collard and Sam Tordoff, who will start down in tenth and 12th respectively.
Jason Plato still seemed to be suffering from the after effects of his earlier accident, which forced him to miss most Free Practice Two, but he responded well to claim a well earned third row berth for tomorrow’s opener. Reigning champion Colin Turkington could only manage ninth in the identical Team BMR VW.
Jack Goff got the better of his MG Triple Eight Racing stablemate Andrew Jordan by claiming seventh – the former having to settle for 11th, ending an impressive run of three successive pole positions at Thruxton. Top rookie Josh Cook remained exactly that as he grabbed eighth.
