Jason Plato took an all important point out of Matt Neal’s championship lead with pole position at Knockhill on Saturday. The SEAT Sport UK driver set the fastest time of the session on his final lap, with a time of 57.467 seconds.

It was VX Racing’s Fabrizio Giovanardi who looked to have snatched pole with just seconds remaining in the session. The Italian was impressive in he wet conditions all day and seemed to have squeezed a good enough time out of the Astra Sport Hatch on the drying track.

Vauxhall and Giovanardi were forced to settle for a second row starting spot when both Plato and SEAT teammate Darren Turner went quicker with their final laps of the session after switching to slick tyres on the front of their Leons.

Plato said, “There were a couple of corners where the slicks were slower and a couple where they were quicker, but I love conditions like that because it’s a proper test of drivers rather than equipment. Each lap was a journey into the unknown because you had to keep pushing that little bit harder but you don’t know how much grip you’ve really got. Each corner was right on the ragged edge and on some corners I made a mistake and on others I didn’t. I made a little mistake at Scotsman Corner on my final lap, but the rest of the lap was pretty good and I knew it was better than the lap I’d done before. That had been good enough for pole at the time, so I knew we’d be there or there abouts.”

“It’s great that Darren’s right up there as well and qualifying first and second on the grid is a great result for the team. It’s just reward for all the hard work everyone has done and you could see by the reaction of everyone in the team how much this means to us. This is exactly what we set out to do today, and now we’re in the best position to control the pace of the first race tomorrow and hopefully lead from the front.”

On his first visit to the Scottish circuit, Fabrizio Gioavanardi thrived in the wet condition: “I hope it rains all weekend”, said the Italian. “I really like driving in the wet, like at Donington. I’ve never been to Scotland before, but I really like the circuit. But you know, it’s ok to be fast in practice, but then you have to be fast in the races too.”

Team Halfords drivers Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal managed just fourth and fifth quickest respectively. Colin Turkington starts sixth in his newly bio-ethanol powered Team RAC MG ZS, with Gareth Howell seventh in the third of the Halfords cars.

James Kaye will start eighth on the grid in his Synchro Motorsport Honda Civic Type-R, with Team RAC’s Rob Collard ninth and Tom Chilton tenth for VX Racing.