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British Touring Car Championship
Oulton Park - Qualifying - 7/6/14

By MJP Media | 7 June 2014

Colin Turkington secures pole position for eBay Motors in the qualifying session from Oulton Park after dominating the day's BTCC action.

Colin Turkington is No. 1 in qualifying at Oulton Park

Following the earlier free practice sessions which were held in variable wet conditions, it was a dry track which greeted the drivers for the qualifying session from Oulton Park. Held on the 'International' circuit for the first time since the 'Supertouring' era, Jason Plato and Alain Menu are the only current BTCC drivers with experience of this longer circuit layout.

Following the earlier rain and expecting the track to be damper, many teams sent their cars out on wet weather tyres, forcing a flurry of pit lane activity as the drivers requested slicks to cope with the dryer conditions. With slick tyres on a virtually dry track, the lap times tumbled by over 10 seconds compared the earlier practice sessions.

Adam Morgan caused the session to be red flagged

Adam Morgan caused the session to be halted two thirds of the way through when he crashed his WIX Racing Mercedes Benz A-Class into the barrier, causing the red flags to be deployed whilst marshals re-built the tyre wall at Druids. When the session resumed there was light rain falling, creating slippery conditions for all concerned. Another red flag situation right at the end of the session was caused by Crabbie's Racing's Jack Clarke and the session was declared over.

Pole position and the first championship point of the weekend went to eBay Motors' Colin Turkington in his BMW 125i M Sport. Jason Plato continued his run of good form, qualifying his MG6 2nd for MG KX Clubcard Fuel Save and will join Turkington on the front row of the grid for the first race tomorrow. Row 2 will be taken by Gordon Shedden in his Honda Yuasa Racing Civic Tourer and Rob Collard in his eBay Motors BMW. Sam Tordoff and Rob Austin also did well and will start on the 3rd row of the grid.

Jason Plato on his way to qualifying 2nd

Although there were three former BTCC champions at the top of the qualifying time sheet, it was a surprise to find the other four former champions significantly further down the order in a group of their own. Fabrizio Giovanardi qualified his Airwaves Racing Ford Focus ST in 12th place with reigning champion Andrew Jordan 13th for Pirtek Racing, Matt Neal 14th for Honda Yuasa Racing and Alain Menu 15th for Chrome Edition Restart Racing.

With better weather forecast for race day it will be interesting to see how the teams fair following the difficult conditions today. Full race coverage can be seen on ITV4 or better still, come to Oulton Park and experience the thrills and spills of Britain's premier motor sport series.

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