Jason Plato has taken his first pole position of the season at Croft this afternoon after setting a fast lap late into the session.Matt Neal had been on top with several minutes still remaining but a late charge from Plato ensured that he secured his first front row qualifying effort of the year.
Plato, driving a normally-aspirated Chevrolet Cruze, was carrying 9kg on his way to pole. Neal set his second-fastest time whilst carrying maximum 45kg of success ballast and was 0.372 seconds adrift.
Click here for the full Round 13 Qualifying times.
Speaking after his lap, Plato said: “We changed the setup for the last run which was a bit of a touchy move because it was a long change, but the guys did a grand job and it made all the difference. My lap time was quite a bit quicker than I’d previously done and that was down to getting the setup right. That’s a great pole, we really used everything we had.”
Rob Collard had topped the timesheets for much of the session but was unable to respond to the late charges of Plato and Neal. Nevertheless the WSR BMW driver will start the first of Sunday’s races from third on the grid. With the BMW’s first-gear handicap having been removed earlier this season, where BMW drivers had to run with a longer first-gear set up to compensate for their superb traction off the line, Collard remains in strong contention for the win tomorrow.
Alex MacDowall was fourth fastest, making it three normally-aspirated cars in the top four positions. He was only marginally faster than the Pirtek Racing car of Andrew Jordan, who once again will start from fifth.
Sixth fastest was James Nash, only 0.018 seconds ahead of the second works Honda of Gordon Shedden. The Scotsman had a relatively quiet session and was never really in contention for pole, despite having claimed the last two pole positions.
Tom Chilton was the top Team Aon driver with the eighth fastest time, whilst Mat Jackson in the older-spec Ford Focus was just behind in ninth, around 1 second off the outright pace.
A superb performance in qualifying, continuing the pace shown in the morning’s practice sessions, was Rob Austin. The 40-year-old easily posted his best qualifying performance of the season to take 11th, having earlier been 12th and 7th fastest in first and second practice. It is the best performance for an NGTC car to date and Austin will be hoping to be the first NGTC driver to score points in Sunday’s races.
Despite his earlier form in practice, Tom Boardman could only manage the 12th fastest time.
The session was relatively incident-free, with notable off-track excursions for Nick Foster and Mat Jackson.