Colin Turkington tops truncated first practice at Croft
West Surrey Racing’s Colin Turkington topped a rain and red flag-affected first practice session at Croft, with a shower midway through ensuring the track was too wet for any late improvements.
Despite the cold conditions, Turkington’s best time of 1.24.498 was just 0.035 shy of the qualifying lap record he set in the BMW 125i here last year.
Reigning champion Andrew Jordan was just over half a second behind in his Eurotech Racing Honda Civic – and under last year’s race lap record – with Adam Morgan third for Ciceley Racing in his Mercedes A-Class.
Turkington’s team-mate Nick Foster was fourth ahead of Triple Eight’s Jason Plato, with Sam Tordoff, Glynn Geddie, Tom Ingram, Matt Neal and Alain Menu completing the top 10.
The weather meant representative times were few and far between, with several drivers much further off the leading pace than they would have been on a dry circuit.
Many used the wet final 15 minutes to secure what could be valuable running in the wet, with unsettled conditions forecast for much of the weekend.
The session was briefly red flagged after 10 minutes after Aiden Moffat’s Chevrolet Cruze hit a kerb and stopped, depositing oil on the circuit in the process.
Moffat’s car was towed back to the pits, and he was the only driver in the 31-car field not to set a laptime.
It was a largely incident-free session after the clean-up operation had been completed, although Rob Austin had a disagreement with Fabrizio Giovanardi and a tyre stack, pitting with damage to the front right corner of his Audi A4.
