Ashley Sutton secures pole in incident-shortened qualifying

Ashley Sutton secured pole position for the fifth meeting of the BTCC season at Croft in a session that was shortened to just nine minutes after a multi-car incident.

The Subaru driver had led the way in both free practice sessions and looked set to carry his pace into qualifying having set the early benchmark ahead of the BMW of Colin Turkington and the Ford Focus of Mat Jackson.

Before the entire field had been able to complete their first timed laps however, the session was halted after a multi-car incident on the exit of the high-speed right-hander at Barcroft.

After Luke Davenport’s Focus dropped oil on the circuit, the cars behind suddenly found themselves with next to no grip approaching one of the quickest parts of the North Yorkshire track.

The BMW of Andrew Jordan spun backwards into the side of the Focus, with Jeff Smith going off into the tyres where he was then collected by the out-of-control MG of Aron Taylor-Smith.

Sutton, Adam Morgan, Ollie Jackson, Ant Whorton-Eales, Stephen Jelley and Jack Goff then all went off on the oil as the session was halted.

Whilst Sutton, Morgan, Jackson, Jelley, Goff and Jordan were able to drag their damaged cars back to the pits, Whorton-Eales’ Audi was recovered with suspension damage, with rescue crews then working to extricate Taylor-Smith, Smith and Davenport from their cars.

All three were removed from their cars by 17:00 local time before taken to the medical centre for checks. At the time of writing, Taylor-Smith had been transferred to hospital with Smith and Davenport continuing to be treated in the medical centre.

None of the injuries are thought to be life-threatening.

Given the time involved in the clear-up of the incident, the decision was taken not to restart the session, leaving Sutton on pole from Turkington and Jackson, with the top six being completed by Gordon Shedden, Josh Cook and Taylor-Smith – although the latter will take no further part in the weekend.

That will promote Jason Plato to sixth, with the top ten completed by Matt Neal, Josh Price, James Cole and Tom Chilton – Jeff Smith also being out of the remainder of the weekend.