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British Touring Car Championship
Croft - Qualifying - 28/6/14

By MJP Media | 28 June 2014

Colin Turkington takes pole position for eBay Motors in the qualifying session from Croft and will start the first race tomorrow on the front row of the grid alongside Jason Plato.

Colin Turkington continued his good form in the qualifying session

With the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship qualifying at Croft delayed by various incidents and accidents in many of the support race events, all eyes were on championship leader Colin Turkington and Sam Tordoff who had both topped the free practice time sheets. Unfortunately, Chris Stockton had to retire his Power Maxed Racing Chevrolet Cruze from the meeting with an engine problem.

The weather was now kinder than earlier in the day with dry and warmer conditions prevailing as Rob Collard set the early quickest lap in his BMW 125i M Sport. Behind, his eBay Motors team-mate Nick Foster was slipstreaming and set a lap time of 1 minute 25.0 to overtake Collard. With seven minutes gone, Jason Plato in the MG KX Clubcard Fuel Save MG6 knocked half a second off Nick Foster's time with Matt Neal in the Honda Yuasa Racing Civic Tourer in 2nd and Adam Morgan in 3rd for WIX Racing in 3rd.

Jason Plato qualified 2nd for MG KX Clubcard Fuel Save

As the tyres warmed up for the front wheel drive cars, changes in the order were inevitable and the top for were then Colin Turkington, Andrew Jordan, Jason Plato and Matt Neal. Following a couple of very quick laps, Jordan made a slight mistake and hit a tyre barrier, causing damage to his splitter and wing and requiring him to come in for repairs. At the halfway stage, Turkington was maintaining the lead from Andrew Jordan, Jason Plato and Sam Tordoff. There was then a red flag period as some barrier tyres were knocked onto the track.

Drama ensued for AmDTuning.com's Dave Newsham during the red flag period when hid Ford Focus ST failed a ride height test, wiping out all of his times so far with just 12 minutes left in the session and leaving him flat last. With 6 minutes to go, Colin Turkington pulled out an amazing lap to go six tenths quicker than anyone else, despite him carrying maximum success ballast. United Autosports' Glynn Geddie was then shown the black flag after several warnings for exceeding track limits and Exocet Racing's Rob Austin had his best lap disallowed and received a driving standards flag for exceeding the track limits.

Gordon Shedden in the Yuasa Racing Honda Civic Tourer

At the end of the session, Colin Turkington had secured pole position by an amazing 3.7 tenths of a second ahead of Jason Plato with Gordon Shedden in third. Shedden's Honda team-mate Matt Neal was fourth ahead of reigning champion Andrew Jordan 5tth, Rob Collard 6th and Sam Tordoff 7th. Adam Morgan, Alain Menu and Rob Austin rounded out the top ten.

The question now on everybody's lips is who can stop Colin Turkington in the eBay Motors BMW 125i M Sport in tomorrow's races? With the other cars so close together there may be a battle royal behind Turkington, however it would be a brave person who bets against him.

Touring Car content supplied by MJP Media