Colin Turkington comfortably tops first Snetterton practice

Team BMR’s Colin Turkington was comfortably fastest in the first free practice session at Snetterton, setting two laps good enough for top spot and ending up nearly half a second quicker than championship leader Sam Tordoff.

Turkington set a time of 1.56.990 in his Subaru Levorg GT with 17 minutes to go and lowered it to a 1.56.547 inside the final two minutes, beating West Surrey Racing’s Tordoff by 0.494.

While ballast-free Turkington’s pace was unsurprising, it was an impressive showing from Tordoff with the maximum 75kg of weight on board.

However, none of the front runners got near the best time of 1.55.932 set by Speedworks Motorsport’s Tom Ingram in the recent Dunlop tyre test.

Triple Eight Racing’s Ash Sutton was third fastest ahead of Motorbase Performance’s Andrew Jordan and Ciceley Racing’s Adam Morgan, with Aron Smith, Josh Cook, Ingram, Mat Jackson and James Cole rounding out the top 10.

It was a quiet session for the Team Dynamics pair of Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal, with neither setting a lap time until the final five minutes, with Neal and Shedden ending up just outside the top ten in 11th and 12th.

Series returnee Michael Caine was 27th in the Team Hard Toyota Avensis, 2.2 seconds off the pace, while Welch Motorsport’s Dan Welch didn’t make it out of the pits in his Proton Gen-2.

There were also issues for the man in second in the championship standings. Rob Collard ended the session down in 19th and missed a chunk of running when his team discovered a leak in the power steering system.

The second free practice session for the BTCC is up next at 12:05 BST.