Aron Taylor-Smith bags pole position for Oulton Park Qualifying Race

Aron Taylor-Smith will start this afternoon’s British Touring Car Championship Qualifying Race from pole position after topping the times in qualifying at Oulton Park.

Topping the times in Group 2, the MB Motorsport driver’s benchmark time of 1:24.213s was enough to secure him first on the grid for upcoming 10-lap encounter around the Cheshire circuit.

Alliance Racing’s Dan Cammish led the way in Group 1 but ended up being less than a tenth of a second shy of the Irishman’s time. That means that the Ford driver will line up alongside Taylor-Smith on the front row of the grid in second.

As per the series’ new format for this season, the group with the pole-setting lap time will occupy the odd-numbered grid positions for the Qualifying Race, while the other group occupy the even-numbered grid positions. Both are ordered by their qualifying times.

Starting third on the grid will be Power Maxed Racing’s Mikey Doble, while Josh Cook and Dexter Patterson are set to start from fourth and fifth respectively.

Sixth is championship leader Ash Sutton, ahead of EXCLER8 team-mates Tom Chilton and Tom Ingram, then Adam Morgan and Aiden Moffat who round out the top ten.

The BTCC’s Oulton Park Qualifying Race is scheduled to commence at 15:05 and can be viewed via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6orscaFk8k.