Matt Neal romps to stunning Thruxton pole position

Matt Neal produced a stunning performance in warm conditions at Thruxton to secure his first pole position of the 2018 BTCC season.

The Honda driver smashed the qualifying lap record en-route to a first pole for the new FK8 version of the Civic Type-R and was one of two drivers to break into the 1min 15secs during a dominant performance that saw him snare pole by more than two-tenths of a second.

That was in stark contrast to what had been seen in practice earlier in the day, with a tight battle for pole having been widely anticipated.

Turkington himself had looked good for pole for a long period at the wheel of his WSR-run BMW before Neal vaulted to the top of the times, with the Northern Irishman being two-tenths of a second clear of Brett Smith in third.

Smith was quick throughout the day in his older Civic Type-R and enjoyed his best qualifying performance to date, with Dan Cammish fourth despite being one of a number of drivers to lose a lap time for exceeding track limits.

Senna Proctor was fifth quickest in his Vauxhall Astra whilst there was an impressive performance from points leader Tom Ingram who took his ballast heavy Toyota to the sixth quickest time – just over half a second off pole.

Sam Tordfoff, Tom Chilton, Andrew Jordan and Chris Smiley rounded out the top ten.

Elsewhere, Jack Goff was 14th in his Eurotech Honda whilst defending champion Ash Sutton was down in 18th as the best of the Subarus.

All 32 cars were able to take part in the session, with AmD completing repairs to the MG of Rory Butcher shortly after the session started to allow him to take to the track.