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British Touring Car Championship
Brands Hatch - Qualifying - 2/4/11

By MJP Media | 2 April 2011

Former BTCC champion Matt Neal secures pole position at Brands Hatch for the first race of the 2011 season.

Action got underway in earnest this afternoon with qualifying for the first races of the 2011 MSA Dunlop British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch in Kent on the 1.2 mile Indy circuit. The most notable incident of the weekend so far was the huge crash that Gordon Shedden suffered in free practice ruling his Honda out of qualifying. The news from the Scotsman's garage is that the car should be ready for action tomorrow, although he will start at the back of the grid.

Tyre warmth is always a big issue on the short circuit with only the front left tyres taking a lot of punishment at Brands. This sometimes benefits the BMW's rear wheel drive, although the BMW's haven't developed over the winter after the factory World Touring Car team moved to 1600cc turbocharged engines.

Early qualifying laps saw an unbelievable lap time of 48.3 seconds from Matt Neal in the Honda, some 3/10ths of a second ahead of the pack. Title rival Jason Plato in the Chevrolet Cruze was in 3rd with Andrew Jordan's Vauxhall Vectra splitting the pair. At the halfway point Tom Chilton in the new 2011 Ford Focus went into second just 1/100ths of a second behind Matt Neal pushing Plato back to 4th, but controversially then failed the ride height test removing his qualifying times so far and having to really start qualifying all over again!

As time started to run down, Alex MacDowall moved steadily up the tables in the Chevrolet, but no one could match Matt Neal's impressive start to the 2011 campaign. Going into race 1 tomorrow it will be Matt Neal on pole in the Honda Civic from Andrew Jordan in the Vectra with Plato's Chevrolet Cruze 3rd, James Nash's Vectra 4th and Alex MacDowall in the second Silverline Chevrolet in 5th.

Be sure not to miss the best of the action from rounds 1, 2 and 3 of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Cars at Brands Hatch tomorrow.

 

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