Josh Cook grabs pole at Thruxton

Josh Cook will start his bid for a record-breaking eighth Thruxton win from pole position after topping the times in qualifying for the third round of the BTCC season.

Cook bounced back from having his first timed lap of the session removed for track limits to grab the first non-BMW pole of the campaign – although it would prove to be a close run thing.

The BTC Racing driver made his bid for top spot late on and a time of 1:15.310 would ultimately prove to be good enough to just defeat Jake Hill, who maintained his record of qualifying on the front row of the grid at every round this season in second.

The margin between the pair would be just 0.077s, with a final lap charge from Dan Cammish seeing him vault up to third – only 0.004s further back.

“We know the car goes well here and qualifying is where we are strong, so I’m really happy to grab pole,” Cook said.

“We had a lap disallowed early on that I was livid about, but we knew the time was in the car and I was able to deliver.”

Behind the top three, Colin Turkington took fourth spot despite spending a large part of the session languishing outside the top ten, with Ash Sutton and Dan Rowbottom rounding out the top six.

Rowbottom would be involved in a bizarre incident mid-way through the session as he slowed out of the final corner to enter the pits and was hit in the rear by Sam Osborne as the Motorbase driver looked to continue onto another flying lap.

Jason Plato had looked set to start on the front two rows before being shuffled back down the order to seventh, with points leader Tom Ingram, Gordon Shedden and Stephen Jelley rounding out the top ten.

Amongst those further down the order than expected were Rory Butcher’s Toyota in 15th spot and the BMW of George Gamble, which will start from one from 16th.