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British Touring Car Championship
Donington Park - Free Practice - 18/4/15

By MJP Media | 18 April 2015

Jason Plato tops the time sheets as the same five drivers dominate both free practice sessions at Donington Park.

Jason topped both the time sheets for Team BMR

Hot on the heels of his BTCC Pro-Am karting win yesterday at the brilliant new Daytona karting circuit at Tamworth, Adam Morgan was desperate to continue his success in the first of the two free practice sessions for the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship's second meeting of the season at the fabulously redeveloped Donington Park circuit.

For this weekend there is the unusual situation of two drivers, Matt Neal and Jack Goff, sharing the points lead in the championship and as a result they share the combined success ballast of the normal 1st and 2nd places and so have 66Kg each on board. The first free practice session saw Andrew Jordan in his MG 888 Racing MG 6GT take an early lead on the timing screens with a blistering 1:10.282 with only Aron Smith close only 0.2 of a second down. There then followed a red flag period as Hunter Abbott went off in his Exocet AlcoSense Racing Audi A4. Behind Jordan and Smith at that point were Gordon Shedden in the Honda Yuasa Racing Honda Civic Type R and Adam Morgan in his WIX Racing Mercedes Benz A-Class. One piece of great news was the appearance for the first time of both of the Infiniti Support Our Paras Infinity Q50s for Derek Palmer and Richard Hawken.

Gordon Shedden continues Honda's good form

The session resumed with 10 minutes left on the clock because of the lengthy delay and the cars were immediately back on track and up to speed as the wall to wall sunshine warmed the track. Jason Plato was the quickest out of the blocks with a 1:09.665 (without ballast) with Gordon Shedden 2nd (with 39kg of ballast). Andrew Jordan was 3rd with his earlier time and Colin Turkington 4th. Aron Smith rounded out the top 5 with only two seconds separating the top 19 drivers.

For the second session, the track temperature had rocketed to 34 degrees as the sun continued to blaze down. Once again it was Jason Plato who continued to set the fastest times, improving to a 1:09.553 early in the session with nobody else below a 1:10. Gordon Shedden was 0.6 of a second back in second and Andrew Jordan a further half a second back in third. Somewhat uniquely, 1 second covered only the first 2 cars! There then followed a red flag situation at the old hairpin as Stewart Lines pulled off with an electrical fault in the Houseman Racing Toyota Avensis. The session resumed with just over 15 minutes to go.

Andrew Jordan was 3rd fastest in both sessions

After the break, Jason Plato was again topping the times with Colin Turkington 2nd, Gordon Shedden 3rd, Aron Smith 4th and Andrew Jordan 5th. The BMWs were suffering though with Sam Tordoff in 14th, Rob Collard 19th and Andy Priaulx 20th as they were almost 1.5 seconds a lap slower than Plato. At the end of the session we saw some real movers as Andrew Jordan went 2nd before Gordon Shedden became only the second car to dip below the 1:10 lap time to go 2nd with Jordan 3rd, Colin Turkington 4th and Aron Smith 5th. A tremendous result went to AmD Tuning.com's Mike Bushell who finished 6th, proving that the former Clio Cup champion was really on the pace.

All this meant that it was the same top five drivers in the same order in both today's free practice sessions. We await this afternoon's qualifying session and will have to wait to see if the temperatures continue to rise and whether this favours some cars more than others. BMW will certainly be hoping for a change in fortunes and we will bring you all of the qualifying action later.

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