Rob Austin claimed a superb maiden British Touring Car Championship pole position at Knockhill, seeing off fierce competition to beat Colin Turkington and Andrew Jordan.
Click here for the full qualifying times.
With 12 minutes remaining Austin made his move to the top of the times and despite a number of drivers threatening to steal pole, they were unable to match his times through the final sector as the Audi driver held on to beat Turkington by just 0.047s.
It was the rear-wheel powered cars of Turkington and Austin who traded early lap times before a first competitive run came from Jordan with eight minutes gone, breaking the lap record in the process.
Warren Scott then brought out the red flags after going backwards into the barriers and mounting the tyres, before dragging himself back onto the circuit. As was the case in practice, the times were incredibly close and at this point in the session, the fastest 12 cars had already broken the previous lap record barrier for the circuit, set by Tom Chilton in 2011.
The session resumed with 19 minutes left on the clock, although Will Bratt’s session was brought to a premature end after he failed a second ride height check, which meant that in stark contrast to teammate Austin, he will start from the rear of the field on raceday.
There was more drama to come as Paul O’Neill was caught out by his teammate Kieran Gallagher at the hairpin, harpooning the sister Insignia and curtailing O’Neill’s participation in qualifying. Gallagher had been held up himself into the corner and had backed off to get a clean run onto the straight. The pair will start 18th and 24th respectively in tomorrow’s first race.
Gordon Shedden looked like he might challenge for pole but again lost out in the final sector, and had to ultimately settle for fourth, ahead of Jason Plato and Matt Neal. Adam Morgan continued a strong weekend with seventh place, with Frank Wrathall, Sam Tordoff and Dan Welch rounding out the top ten.
There was encouragement for Mike Bushell on his debut in the series as he ended qualifying in 17th place, less than three-tenths-of-a-second behind Austin, but that was in stark contrast to Aiden Moffat’s fortunes, as the youngster was unable to take part in the session in his s2000 Cruze. Of the Jack Sears Trophy runners, Liam Griffin was the fastest ahead of Lea Wood and David Nye.
Race One starts tomorrow at 11:45 BST.