Turkington on pole at Croft

Sat 13th June 2009 Team RAC’s Colin Turkington has closed to within a single point of championship leader Matt Neal after securing pole position for round 13 of the 2009 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship at Croft this afternoon.

Turkington lapped the North Yorkshire circuit in a time of one minute, 26.006 seconds to ensure his BMW 320si E90 starts tomorrow’s first race from pole position. He will be joined on the front row by Racing Silverline’s Jason Plato, while points leader Neal could only manage eighth quickest.

Following the session, Turkington said, “It’s nice to be P1. We set a good time. We made some little changes to the car after free practice this morning and credit to the team because they seem to have worked. Stephen has done well in third, too so we’ll just look to tomorrow now and hope it works out.”

Jason Plato said, “I just didn’t get that perfect lap. Colin in the BMW is in a league of his own around here. He only really needed to qualify in the top four and he would fly off into the distance at the start. We’re at the right end of the grid though and I think we’ve genuinely got good pace in the car. I’m a little bit frustrated, but I’m ahead of the rest of the front-wheel drive cars.”

Adam Jones will start fourth on the grid for Cartridge World Carbon Zero Racing after his best qualifying performance of the season so far, while it’s an all Chevrolet Lacetti third row with Mat Jackson ahead of Harry Vaulkhard. Andrew Jordan and Matt Neal will start seventh and eighth for VX Racing, with James Thompson and Rob Collard ninth and tenth respectively.

The first of Sunday’s three BTCC races is scheduled to start just after midday and all three races will be shown live on ITV4.