Matt Neal put the Honda Racing Civic Type R in pole position for tomorrow’s two races at the Thruxton round of the British Touring Car Championship after a near-perfect lap of the fast Hampshire circuit.

It was almost a Honda front row with Neal’s team-mate Alan Morrison spending much of the session in second fastest on the timesheet. But, with just a few minutes left on the clock, James Thompson forced himself between the two Civics to squeeze out Ulsterman Morrison by just 0.007seconds.

The youngster of the team Tom Chilton had an incident-packed qualifying session when he got completely sideways going into the chicane. Despite clipping the grass with the front spoiler he managed to keep it all together and finished eighth on the grid. He shares an identical time with seventh place qualifier Colin Turkington.

Matt Neal: “That was a good lap. Everything came together absolutely right and the Civic Type R is going really well here. The entire team has been working through a test programme this weekend and it’s worked out very well - we’ve got the car that’s absolutely on the money. Position one in qualifying is always nice but the race is different. We’re conscious that the ambient temperature could rise tomorrow and so things could change for the races.”

Alan Morrison: “I just got pipped by Thompson there and by only seven thousandths of a second. That’s a bit of a shame as it would have been really good for Honda Racing to go one-two. But the race is another thing and it’s the race that matters. We’ve been working hard to make up the gap on the opposition. They’ve been to Thruxton more times than us and they know their way around better. But we’ve got three cars here all running with three different settings and that helped us work out an excellent race set-up.”

Tom Chilton: “That was an interesting session! We made loads of changes during the day as we hunted for a good race set-up. I’m sure I could have done a faster lap but I made the wrong decision when I came in for tyres. I had the choice of changing all four tyres, or just the fronts. I opted for just the fronts and it turned out to be the wrong choice. It takes three laps to get the tyres we use here – which are quite hard – working well and by the time the fronts came in the backs had gone. But eighth isn’t bad and we have the Honda Civic Type R going so well here that I’m confident for the races.”