Neal and Shedden secure Honda 1-2 at Donington

Matt Neal has taken his second pole in as many races, with team-mate Gordon Shedden starting second on the grid after a dominant display by Honda in an action packed session.

The Hondas didn’t wait too long to show their true hand, with Matt Neal’s pole lap of 1:10.129, another track record, set just over ten minutes into the thirty minute session.

The qualifying session was disrupted by three red flags. The first was for Mat Jackson, who had gone off into the gravel trap at Craner Curves after a misunderstanding when passing the Honda of Gordon Shedden, who was trying to give way to the Motorbase Performance driver.

Jackson’s early flying lap would still be good enough for seventh.

The second red flag was for debris pulled onto the track by a spinning Andy Neate.

Neate was also involved in another incident shortly after the session resumed, recovering from another spin in front of Chris James, which also saw the SEAT of Tom Boardman take damage in the incident, with heavy damage to the Team ES Racing car, and Boardman out of the rest of the session.

The third red flag was to recover the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis of Tony Hughes, after Hughes and James Nash had made contact.

Shedden missed the final part of session with broken suspension, but his time of 1:10.172 was safe enough for him to stay second, with a last few laps by James Nash and Andrew Jordan good enough to secure the Vauxhall pair (for Triple Eight and Eurotech Racing) the second row on the grid and the top pair in the independents category.

Jason Plato, despite carrying 45kg of success ballast was the fastest pure Super 2000 car, 1.233s down on Neal’s time in eighth, with team-mate MacDowall just behind him in ninth.

Frank Wrathall was the fastest NGTC-specification car in 20th, 2.3s down on Neal’s time, with Rob Austin qualifying 21st on his team’s debut in the BTCC.