John Cleland secures pole at a wet Oulton Park

John Cleland took pole position in a damp, interrupted qualifying session at Oulton Park as circuit conditions in the latter stages hampered his rivals.

Due to the weather conditions, many drivers went out on track as soon as the 30 minute session began, with Cleland taking an early advantage over the pre-race favourite, and 2013 Oulton Park Gold Cup double-winner, James Dodd in the Honda Accord.

As Dodd came round to complete his second lap around the Cheshire circuit’s International layout, Cleland appeared to be missing, eventually coming back to the pits with a distinct lack of speed and pulling in to the pits, where he would stay for the remainder of the session.

It was later revealed that Cleland had suffered a broken wishbone mount, and with the only spare part for the car belonging to a man in Milton Keynes, the pole-sitter was unavailable for comment.

Luckily for the Scotsman, his opening lap was enough to secure him pole position ahead of Saturday afternoon’s race, with Dodd only able to close the margin to 0.4 seconds on his second lap before a red flag halted proceedings.

The stoppage of the session came courtesy of Paul Smith’s BMW dropping oil around the circuit, causing the Nissan of Dave Jarman to go off at Island Bend. As a result of the now slippery surface, no-one was able to come close to the times at the top of the leaderboard once the session restarted.

Smith had managed to set a time good enough for fifth before his engine issue, although believed he was on for a better time before spinning on the exit of Lodge and ruining his lap.

Some surprising names away from the top of the time sheets were 2013 Champion Stewart Whyte, who failed to break the top 20 times, and Patrick Watts. Despite a late surge of laps from Watts, the track conditions meant the best the Peugeot driver could get was eleventh, a full four seconds behind Alvin Powell’s Ford Mondeo in tenth.