Matt Neal surprised with shock pole position

Matt Neal took his third pole position of the season despite carrying the maximum ballast of 45kg at Silverstone, and sets up a thrilling finale with three title protagonists starting right behind him and Jason Plato down in seventh.

“It’s a welcome shock,” said Neal to TouringCarTimes.

“I brought in my tyres a little bit of a different way that (final) time as I was struggling to get the most out of the front tyres on the first lap. So I just took it really easy and I thought ‘well, I’ve got one lap’…and every corner was on the absolute limit, but I didn’t expect (pole) at all.”

Neal, along with 13 other drivers received the black & white flag for exceeding the track limits on three occassions at Copse in the session, with other drivers warned including Honda team-mate Gordon Shedden and Chevrolet rival Jason Plato.

“The problem is here is you’ve got to put four wheels off to get a time,” explained Neal. “The times are that close, you’re looking for hundredths not tenths. You’ve got three laps in qualifying then that’s it, three flying laps. If you do it and then you mess the lap up later on, you’ve used one of your ‘lives’ so to speak. I knew on the last run I’d done it twice and I had one left.”

Neal will start on the front row alongside the Motorbase Ford Focus ST of Mat Jackson, who was the pace setter in FP2 and throughout qualifying up until Neal’s pole lap, and Neal reckons he’ll be difficult to fight tomorrow.

“If he gets in front, he’s gone. And if he’s behind, it’s going to be hard work. They seem to have the car working well here, I’m just going to take it as it comes.”

Neal will now pick up one extra point for pole position giving him a six point lead over team-mate Gordon Shedden and Chevrolet’s Jason Plato in the standings going into the first race.