Adam Shepherd scores Snetterton pole

Adam Shepherd produced a dominant run in qualifying at Snetterton to score pole for the penultiumate meeting of the TCR UK season.

The Capture Motorsport driver was in a class of his own during the session as he topped the times by more than six-tenths of a second ahead of his nearest rival, which would prove to be George Jaxon.

“It’s a good start to the weekend,” Shepherd said. “We wanted to put in on pole and try to win both races and we’ve done the first part. We’re in a good place with the car at the moment and if I could have any car on the grid then it would be this one.”

Jaxon switches over to a CUPRA Leon VZ TCR this weekend and earned his place on the front row of the grid ahead of series debutant Max Hall, who put his Lynk & Co into third spot.

Hall was the only non-CUPRA driver in the top eight as he returns to action for the first time since calling time on his BTCC programme.

Sam Laidlaw joins Hal on the second row having outpaced father Steve by just 0.002s, leaving it until the last lap of the session to set his best time.

Brad Hutchison rounded out the top six in his older Leon Competicion TCR, with Harry Bloor seventh having moved over from a Hyundai i30 N TCR following the fire that devastated Power Maxed Racing.

Will Beech, Luke Sargeant and points leader Callum Newsham rounded out the top ten, although the latter would only set one timed lap at the wheel of his new Hyundai Elantra N TCR.

Newsham did set a time that would have been third fastest but it was removed for exceeding track limits, although he will start race one from the back regardless after switching cars ahead of the event.

“We’re struggling a bit for set-up and I was making mistakes, so there is time on the table – we just need to tweak some things,” he said. “There is a lot of learning still to do with the car and it didn’t feel great in qualifying; I won’t lie.

“We’ve just got to get as close to Adam as we can tomorrow and see what we can do in the reverse grid second race.”