Jason Plato leads MG one-two in Silverstone qualifying
Jason Plato edged out his Triple Eight MG team-mate Sam Tordoff by just 0.009s to take pole position with a new qualifying lap record at Silverstone.
Plato put in two successive laps under his 2012 best within the first 10 minutes of the session, with a 58.406 followed by a 58.210, and remained at the top until the end of the 30 minutes.
Speedworks Motorsport’s Dave Newsham repeated his strong morning form to take third in his Toyota Avensis, with Colin Turkington a slightly surprised fourth for West Surrey Racing.
Turkington had missed some of the practice running and was also missing straight-line speed, but was able to drag an outstanding lap out of his BMW 125i.
Dynojet’s Frank Wrathall was fifth despite having his early times deleted for failing a ride height test, while Jack Goff was a career-best sixth in his Tony Gilham Racing Vauxhall Insignia.
Adam Morgan, Rob Collard, Matt Neal and series leader Andrew Jordan rounded out the top 10.
The injured Neal had a lucky escape when he spun exiting Copse on one of his flying laps, when several cars had to take evasive action to avoid hitting him, while Jordan was pleased with his performance carrying maximum ballast, on a track not suited to his Honda Civic.
Just behind the pair in 11th was the impressive Andy Neate, taking the best grid slot to date for the fledgling IP Tech Race team in his Chevrolet Cruze.
Rockingham winner Rob Austin languished down in 19th in his Audi A4, while Lea Wood was the fastest of the two Jack Sears Trophy runners in 24th, in his JWT Performance Vauxhall Vectra.
The top 20 were all within one second of pole, with just 1.753s covering the entire field.
Continuing a theme from the morning, Will Bratt, Gordon Shedden, Adam Morgan, Dan Welch, Tom Onslow-Cole and Liam Griffin all lost their best times at various parts of the session, after exceeding track limits.
Warren Scott, who had set the sixth fastest time in second practice, was forced to sit the session out with an alternator issue on his Tony Gilham Racing Volkswagen CC.
The first of tomorrow’s three races gets under way at 11:57 BST.
