Tom Chilton has taken pole position in this afternoon’s qualifying session at Donington Park as Team Aon locked out the front row. Chilton set a new lap record of 1:11.328 to beat his team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole by 0.081 seconds. Gordon Shedden, who had led the session early on, was third fastest.
Click here for the full Round 25 Qualifying times.
At the start of the session all of the drivers had been keen to get out early and set a time as the skies overhead threatened a rain shower. However the rain ended up being only light and everyone was able to comfortably lap on slick tyres throughout the session.
Shedden had been one of the fastest drivers until mid-way through the session Andy Neate brought out the red flags after spinning into the Redgate gravel. When the session resumed it was Chilton who went quickest, shortly followed by Onslow-Cole jumping into second, relegating Shedden to third.
Fourth fastest was Jason Plato – crucially ahead of championship rival Matt Neal who was fifth.
Andrew Jordan continued his solid performances in practice to take sixth on the grid. The next row sees Paul O’Neill in seventh after once again putting in an impressive performance in his Honda Integra. Alongside him will be Rob Collard who qualified in eighth and is the top BMW driver after improving on his lacklustre practice performances.
Tom Boardman was ninth fastest in his SEAT Leon after his best qualifying performance of the season. Alex MacDowall is alongside after struggling throughout the session and ending up in tenth and the last of the works drivers.
Mat Jackson was 11th in a difficult session for Airwaves BMW. There was yet more bad luck for Motorbase – Steven Kane failed to even take to the track during qualifying after his car couldn’t be started. The team had had to change his gearbox after practice and by not setting a time it means he will start from 21st and last on the grid for tomorrow’s first race.
The tough weekend also continued for Forster Motorsport – Arthur Forster only completed 10 laps and qualified with the slowest time before a gearbox problem hit his BMW.