Photo: PSP Images

Sam Tordoff secures pole position at Silverstone

Motorbase Performance’s Sam Tordoff has taken his first pole position since Croft in 2015 at Silverstone, outqualifying the West Surrey Racing BMW of Ricky Collard, while the main championship contenders struggled.

Tordoff’s best time of 58.323 was set in the first ten minutes of the session, as the first of the front-wheel drive cars to move ahead of the West Surrey Racing BMW trio, with team-mate Tom Chilton briefly holding second position.

The two Motorbase cars were later split by an improvement by Ricky Collard, who was 0.018 seconds slower than Tordoff and safely secured a front row starting position in only his third BTCC event.

Jack Goff qualified his Eurotech Racing Honda Civic in fourth ahead of Andrew Jordan’s BMW, with Matt Neal’s Team Dynamics Honda sixth, Matt Simpson’s Simpson Racing Honda Civic seventh, followed by the two Mercedes of Aiden Moffat and Adam Morgan, with Eurotech Honda driver Brett Smith completing the top ten.

Of the top three championship contenders, Colin Turkington was the best-placed, despite being down in 18th position, with the West Surrey Racing BMW driver one spot ahead of the Speedworks Toyota Avensis of Tom Ingram, and with the Team BMR Subaru of reigning champion Ash Sutton struggling down in 25th position, one spot ahead of team-mate Jason Plato.

One second covered the top 29 cars in the session, with only the championship’s newcomers Josh Caygill in the AmD Tuning MG 6 GT and Ethan Hammerton in the Team Hard Volkswagen outside of the one second barrier.

The first race is scheduled for 12:10 BST (13:10 CEST) on Sunday.