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British Touring Car Championship
Brands Hatch (Indy) - Qualifying - 4/4/15

By MJP Media | 4 April 2015

Andy Priaulx takes the first pole position of the 2015 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship as Team BMR puts three cars in the top four positions on the grid.

Andy Priaulx with his Team IHG Rewards Club BMW 125i M Sport

After two very interesting free practice sessions earlier today that left nobody in any doubt as to how competitive this season would be it was all down to the 30 minute qualifying session to see who would take the first pole position of 2015 and with it the first championship point of the year. Warren Scott was missing from the session after crashing his Volkswagen CC at the end of the second free practice session. Also of interest is that this qualifying session and the first race tomorrow are the only competitive sessions of the season where no success ballast applies.

In the early stages it was Andy Priaulx MBE who was quickest in his Team IHG Rewards Club BMW 125i M Sport ahead of Team BMR's Jason Plato and Honda Yuasa Racing's Gordon Shedden. Andrew Jordon survived a big off at Paddock Hill whilst his MG 888 Racing team-mate Jack Goff went off at Clearways. This was extremely disappointing for the team after their turbo problems earlier in the day.

Qualifying 2nd, Aron Smith leads a 3-car challenge by Team BMR

In the middle of the session Colin Turkington showed his class in the new Team BMR Volkswagen CC by going faster than Andy Priaulx with Jason Plato in third and the two Honda Yuasa Racing Civic Type Rs of Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal 4th and 5th. With Sam Tordoff 6th for JCT600 Racing with GardX, Aron Smith 7th for Team BMR and Tom Ingram 8th for Speedworks Motorsport, all the top 8 drivers were within 4/10ths of a second of each other.

With 10 minutes to go there was drama as Martin Depper lost his front left wheel at Druids, causing a red flag situation as his car was stranded in a dangerous place and the clock was stopped with 10.44 minutes left. The delay was quite lengthy as the recovery team were unable to winch the car on to the truck as it was so low in the grass. At this point, it was Andy Priaulx who was 1/10 of a second ahead of Colin Turkington with Gordon Shedden 3rd, Jason Plato 4th and Matt Neal 5th. The rest of the session was going to be a flat out sprint and finding a space with no traffic was going to be crucial.

Andy Priaulx on his way to pole position at Brands Hatch

After 20 minutes the cars returned to the track for the final shoot out and the early mover was Gordon Shedden who leapfrogged Jason Plato to re-take 3rd. Sam Tordoff then moved up to 5th and Andrew Jordon moved up to 6th. Rob Collard then put in a fantastic lap to go 3rd fastest and give BMW two out of the top three places. Aron Smith then went 2nd fastest with Jason Plato 3rd for Team BMR with team mate Colin Turkington now 4th.

At the flag it was Andy Priaulx who took pole position on his return to the BTCC. Then it was the three Team BMR Volkswagen CCs of Aron Smith, Jason Plato and Colin Turkington - an ominous sign for the rest of the teams! Rob Collard was 5th in his BMW with Jack Goff in the MG 6GT 6th, Gordon Shedden 7th and Sam Tordoff 8th, Tom Ingram in the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis and Andrew Jordan in his MG rounded out the top 10.

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