Matt Simpson leads wet-to-dry first practice at Snetterton

Matt Simpson was fastest of all in his Eurotech Honda Civic in the first free practice session at Snetterton, in a session where the times rapidly improved after the circuit had been doused by a heavy rainfall just before the start.

All cars started on wet tyres with the times in the 2:20s in the early stages, some 30 seconds from the times that the cars would be running at the end of the session.

It was the Team HARD Volkswagen CCs which showed pace throughout, with Mike Bushell spending much of the session at the top of the time sheets, only pipped at the last moment by a late improvement by Simpson in the Honda.

The session was over before it started for Josh Cook in the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra after he slammed into the rear of team-mate Senna Proctor and suffered significant front-end damage.

Proctor was able to continue on, while Cook spent the rest of the 40-minute session in the pit lane with the team working to repair his car.

Tom Ingram brought out the red flag with just over 16 minutes to go when his Speedworks Toyota Avensis stopped ahead of Palmer, with the session stopped for five minutes.

Simpson’s time of 1:56.783 was the best of the session, while Chris Smiley jumped to second in the BTC Norlin Honda Civic to make it a Honda 1-2, with Bushell the top Volkswagen in third, just 0.154 seconds behind.

Tom Oliphant was fourth in his Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes, with Andrew Jordan fifth in the West Surrey Racing BMW 125i M Sport.

Championship leader Colin Turkington was ninth in his BMW despite carrying 75kg of success ballast this weekend, with the Team BMR Subarus which had shown improved pace last time out at Croft were back in the back half of the field, with reigning champion Ash Sutton 18th and Jason Plato in 30th.

Free Practice 2 follows and is scheduled for 12:10 BST.