Matt Neal takes first BTCC pole since 2012 at Thruxton

Matt Neal secured his first pole since the 2012 BTCC season during qualifying for the third round of the year at Thruxton.

The Honda driver edged out team-mate Gordon Shedden to clinch top spot as Honda dominated the session, with Jack Goff snaring third spot at the wheel of his Eurotech Racing-run entry.

Neal topped the times for a large part of the session with a performance that was good enough to break the existing qualifying lap record and was able to sit out the closing moments after a red flag cause by Jeff Smith going off at Allard.

Despite a five minute dash to the flag, the leading positions would remain unchanged, with the three Hondas at the head of the field being followed by championship leader Tom Ingram, who produced his quickest laps of the day in his Toyota Avensis to secure a spot on the second row.

Rob Austin was a solid sixth place ahead of Smith, with the Mercedes of Adam Morgan and Tom Chilton’s Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall rounding out the top eight.

That wasn’t to last for Chilton however, who was stripped of his best lap after the session and demoted down to eleventh spot.

It meant Ash Sutton, again the only one of the Subaru drivers to challenge towards the sharp end of the grid, ended up in P8, with Colin Turkington’s BMW and the Ford Focus of Mat Jackson rounding out the top ten.

There was a more troublesome session for the likes of Andrew Jordan and Rob Collard down in 16th and 18th, with Jason Plato outside the top 20 in 21st.

Josh Cook and Aron Taylor-Smith both had offs in the closing part of the session, with the former taking a trip through the grass and the latter nudging into the barriers.