Jason Plato takes pole at Silverstone as Honda struggle

Jason Plato has taken his fifth pole position of the 2012 British Touring Car Championship for MG, qualifying ahead of Team ES Racing’s Dave Newsham and Motorbase’s Mat Jackson, whilst Honda drivers Neal and Shedden will start 10th and 20th.

Plato was the first driver to set a time under 59 seconds with a time of 58.964, which also saw him break Matt Neal’s qualifying lap record from last season. The Triple Eight driver continued to improve his time, setting another four improvements to finish with a time of 58.717.

The two Honda drivers were struggling to improve, with Matt Neal sliding the Honda Civic whilst Gordon Shedden had a late spin at Brooklands and came into the pits, but was unable to improve when he rejoined.

“The only positive is the session’s finished,” said an unhappy Shedden. On his spin, Shedden remarked: “That’s just overdriving trying to squeeze more out of the car. Leading the championship and you qualify 20th, something’s amiss.”

Dave Newsham was the fastest independent driver qualifying in second, just one-thousandth of a second ahead of a repaired Ford Focus of Mat Jackson.

Frank Wrathall qualified fourth for Dynojet Racing with Rob Collard fifth in the West Surrey Racing BMW. Dan Welch, who was fastest in FP2 was sixth in qualifying.

Independents’ championship points leader Andrew Jordan qualified in 11th, one spot behind last year’s champion Matt Neal.

The top 20 drivers were all covered by less than a second in the incredibly tight qualifying session.

The first race gets underway at 11:45 BST on Sunday 7th October.