Stewart Whyte secures pole to boost title bid at Oulton Park

Stewart Whyte pulled out one of the qualifying performances of the season as he secured pole position in the Super Touring Car Championship at the Oulton Park Gold Cup.

In drying conditions, Whyte consistently improved throughout the session, putting in the most laps of any driver during the 20 minute allocation and ending on a pole-winning 1:53.841.

The session began in very wet conditions after a heavy downpour over the Cheshire circuit in the morning, with Paul Smith making the most of his four-wheel-drive Audi A4 and placing himself at the top of the timing screens. However, as the track dried out, Whyte put his head down and promptly leapfrogged the Audi to put his Honda Accord in pole position.

“I had to get pole to put us in the best position to get both race wins this weekend,” Whyte told TouringCarTimes. “I think we could’ve gone even quicker, we seem to have found the sweet spot with the setup and it just felt great.”

The two drivers were separated by less than a second in the first ten minutes, joined by John Cleland, who once again found himself battling for the top of a wet Oulton Park grid, having taken pole position in similar conditions at the series’ first visit to the track in June.

Graeme Dodd completed the second row of the grid, unable to keep up with the times of the top three, but positioning himself clear of the ST2 class battle that was forming behind him.

The next four positions were split by less than a second, with the BMWs of Darren Fielding and Roger Lavender just beating Tony Absolom’s Vauxhall Cavalier, the latter pair only separated by 0.034 seconds.

Mark Jones and Kingsley Ingram filled eighth and ninth places in the Renault Laguna and Mazda 323F respectively, while Keith Butcher and Dave Jarman continued their season-long Nissan Primera battle in 10th and 11th places. Mark Smith, Mark Wright and Ric Wood rounded out the final places on the grid in the GA class battle.

Finally, championship leader James Dodd will start from the back of the grid after locking up at Lodge and going straight on in to the tyre wall, causing some front-end damage to the Honda Accord and giving Stewart Whyte a lifeline in his bid to overthrow Dodd at the top of the championship standings come Monday afternoon.