Jason Plato leads disrupted Free Practice 1 session at Knockhill

Team BMR Subaru driver Jason Plato was fastest of all in the 40-minute first free practice session at the Knockhill circuit in Scotland, which was twice stopped due to incidents, preventing any major improvements during the final 20 minutes.

The majority of key times were set during the first part of the session, with Speedworks Motorsport’s Tom Ingram the first driver to break under the 53 second barrier with a time of 52.663. His time which was shortly bettered by the Team BMR Subaru Levorg of Jason Plato during the next ten minutes with a time of 52.545.

Just before halfway, the session was red flagged when Motorbase Performance’s Andrew Jordan crashed out at Clark’s curve with possible front-left suspension failure on his Ford Focus ST.

“Initially I thought it was a puncture, but the stub axle has sheered clean off,” said Jordan. “I was lucky it went there instead of Turn 1.”

It took ten minutes before Jordan’s car was recovered, with the session resuming with just ten minutes left to run.

There were no major improvements during the next few minutes before the session was red flagged again with another car off at Clark’s curve, but practice quickly resumed with just two minutes to go, leaving no time for any improvements.

Plato therefore finished the session fastest on the eve of his 500th race in the championship, seven-thousandths of a second ahead of Speedworks’ Tom Ingram in the Toyota Avensis. Triple Eight MG driver Ashley Sutton completed the top three.

Jordan’s time before his crash was good enough for him to finish sixth fastest, while Sam Tordoff, now second in the championship after a troubled weekend at Snetterton two weeks’ ago, was fifth quickest in the West Surrey Racing BMW 125i M-Sport.

Championship leader Rob Collard was 11th fastest in the sister BMW, while the two factory Hondas of Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal finished the session tenth and 30th.

All 31 cars took to the track, including the Team BKR Volkswagen CC of Mark Howard, the Power Maxed Racing Chevrolet of Hunter Abbott and the Welch Motorsport Proton Gen-2 of Dan Welch which all took significant damage at the last race weekend at Snetterton.

Free Practice 2 follows at 12:10 BST.