Photo: PSP Images

Sam Tordoff pips Andy Priaulx to Croft pole position

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Sam Tordoff pipped West Surrey Racing team-mate Andy Priaulx to pole position in a frantic qualifying session at Croft, setting a new lap record in the process, with Honda Racing Team’s Gordon Shedden the best placed of the championship leaders in third.

Triple world champion Priaulx jumped to the top of the times in his BMW 125i with 12 minutes to go and bettered his lap in the closing minutes, only for Tordoff to beat him by 0.070 on his final run and take his first pole for his new team.

Shedden was another late mover in the Honda Civic Type-R, knocking Rob Collard down to fourth in the final seconds to deny WSR a one-two-three on the grid. However, both were more than half a second off Tordoff’s best time.

Behind them, Colin Turkington was the best of the Team BMR drivers in fifth ahead of Shedden’s team-mate Matt Neal, with Rob Austin taking a season’s best seventh in his Audi A4 having briefly topped the times around the halfway point.

Triple Eight’s Jack Goff, Ciceley Racing’s Adam Morgan and Goff’s team-mate Andrew Jordan rounded out the top 10, with championship leader Jason Plato in 12th, just behind Aron Smith. The top 13 runners were covered by a second, down to Speedworks Motorsport’s Tom Ingram, with fourth to seventh covered by less than a tenth.

In the final reckoning, Tordoff, Priaulx and Shedden all set laps which bettered Turkington’s lap record set two years ago in his West Surrey Racing days.

At the rear of the field, debutant Nicolas Hamilton was slowest of the 29 cars which ran, his AmD Tuning Audi S3 ending up 4.140 seconds off the pace. Fellow debutant Max Coates was one place further forward in the Support Our Paras Racing Infiniti Q50, around half a second faster than Hamilton.

The only incident of note was an early spin in the final sector for Collard, which he quickly recovered from.

Kieran Gallagher’s trying day continued, with the Tony Gilham Racing man pulling off the circuit at the final hairpin with a technical problem in the opening minutes of the session. The Scotsman was the only driver in the field not to set a laptime.