Photo: PSP

SEAT on top in Oulton Park qualifying

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SEAT have shown their performance at Snetterton was not a one off by locking out the front row of the grid for tomorrows race at Oulton Park. Jason Plato beat team mate Darren Turner by just 0.16s to take pole position. Turner could not beat the time set by his team mate despite being 27kg lighter on ballast.

Jason Plato was consistently fastest in practice and set his best time early in qualifying. Both Plato and Turner set the bar too high and could not be beaten for the rest of the session.

The session was red flagged near the end of qualifying due to an off that ended him putting his BTC Racing SEAT into the gravel trap.

Tom Chilton was the quickest non-SEAT driver placing his SEAT third to start behind Plato on the second row of the grid tomorrow.

Onslow-Cole narrowly pipped Giovanardi to fourth pushing his team mate down to fifth. Giovanardi’s effort was still great as he carried maximum success ballast.

Jason Plato had this to say:
“Each time we run the Leon TDI we get a little bit closer to finding a perfect set-up. We’re not there yet, but the car is now a lot easier to drive and that is where the time is coming from. We’ve dialled out the understeer we had earlier in the year and we’ve unlocked some performance in the handling department, so the car is starting to work well. We have plenty to do because we’re a long way behind in the points, but it’s one step at a time and the objective today was to put the car on pole. So far, so good – now we need to win some races tomorrow.”