Colin Turkington has scooped pole position for the opening race of the 2007 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship for Team RAC, edging out Jason Plato by just 0.016 seconds.

Turkington’s performance is remarkable, given that the car ran for the first time only last Monday, when the team underwent a shakedown test at Pembrey.

Turkington said, “It’s absolutely fantastic. We’ve come on in leaps and bounds. We learnt a little bit on every lap in free practice this morning and we managed to get it right for qualifying.”

Jason Plato was among the favourites for pole ahead of the session, and he spent much of the half-hour at the top of the times, only for Turkington to go quickest in the closing stages, and then improve even further. Plato’s hopes of a late challenge were thwarted when he was called on the weighbridge as he came into the pitlane with just a couple of minutes remaining, leaving him with insufficient time for a final run.

“It was very busy out there”, said Plato after the session. “We believe we have good race pace, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Tomorrow promises to be a very exciting day!”

Plato’s teammate Darren Turner was third quickest, ahead of Vauxhall pairing Fabrizio Giovanardi and Tom Chilton. Sixth and seventh spots on the grid went to BTCC newcomers Mat Jackson and Tom Onslow-Cole in their respective BMWs. Mike Jordan was the quickest of the BTCC-spec cars, in eighth, ahead of reigning champion Matt Neal in the new Honda Civic. Adam Jones completed the top ten in the GR Asia prepared SEAT Toledo Cupra.

The top 14 drivers were covered by less than a second, and all signs are that Sundays races will be extremely hard-fought. You can of course catch all the details right here on BTCCPages.com!