It was Tom Chilton, making his BTCC return after sitting out the first meeting of the season, who set the pace today at Thruxton. The 20 year-old went quickest in the morning's first session, only to be edged out by Colin Turkington in the closing stages. The Arena Motorsports Honda Civic Type-R was once again fastest in the second session, successfully holding on until the end of the session this time, with a time of 1.

It was a theme that continued into the afternoon's qualifying session, when Chilton was more than half a second quicker than Jason Plato, who joins him on the front row for tomorrow's first race. Chilton went even quicker than his morning time, setting a best lap of 1.17.011. Chilton and the Arena Motorsports Team made it look easy, setting the time early on in the session, before returning the pits and watching the rest of the field try in vain to match him.

Chilton said, "I really enjoyed that. It felt so good to be out there and on the limit. We didn't expect to be that quick. We haven't touched the car since the end of last season, so we thought that everyone else would have developed their engines, which makes a big difference here. We didn't decide we were coming back until Wednesday morning, so it's great to be so quick. I love it."

Jason Plato and the Seat Sport UK team enjoyed a more successful qualifying session than last time out at Donington Park. Despite being 0.5XX secs off the pace of the flying Chilton, Plato's best time of 1.17.567 sees him start round four of the championship from the second spot on the grid.

Plato commented, "That was a good session for me. We tried some different setups in practice, and we made some more changes before qualifying. Each time I've driven the car today, it has improved. We're still half a second off the pace of car that hasn't run for a few months though, so we still have something to do. We generally have good tyre longevity, and our race pace is usually quite good, so it's looking promising."

Colin Turkington is the first of the VX Racing Astra Sport Hatches, qualifying in third, 0.077 behind Plato. He is joined on the second row by Dan Eaves in the quicker of the Team Halfords Honda Integras, while Yvan Muller, who has performed well at Thruxton in recent seasons, could manage no better than fifth on the grid.

"There is not much to say", said a frustrated Muller. "I am very disappointed with the balance of the car at the moment. There is a problem somewhere, but I don't know where at the moment. The weight does not help around here, and we haven't done any work with this tyre. It is probably the setup of the car that is wrong for this tyre. All of the winter testing was with the new Dunlop tyre, but here we use last year's tyre. It's a bit of a lottery."

Alongside Muller on the grid is Matt Neal, while Rob Collard and James Pickford fill the fourth row, with Luke Hines and James Kaye on the fifth row. Yet more cruel luck struck HPI Racing with Friends Reunited, with engine troubles preventing Richard Williams from taking to the track during the session, and likely to rule the newcomers out of tomorrow's race action.

Photos: Stillphotography.co.uk