Colin Turkington smashes BTCC lap record to claim Croft pole position

Colin Turkington obliterated the existing British Touring Car Championship qualifying lap record to claim pole position at Croft Circuit.

In what was a frenetic session around the North Yorkshire circuit, the ‘King of Croft’ rocketed to the top of the leaderboard with a best time of 1:21.072 netting him a front row start for the first of Sunday’s three races.

Alliance Racing’s Dan Rowbottom was one of the big casualties from the opening segment of qualifying as he failed to make Q2 after losing two lap times – both of which would have been good enough to progress – due to exceeding track limits.

Track limits would hamper others in the second portion of qualifying with the Toyota duo of Josh Cook and Andrew Watson, as well as championship leader Jake Hill, missing the cut. Hill would ultimately be left seething as he was demoted back to 11th overall.

Five different teams made up the top six with Tom Ingram, Ash Sutton, Colin Turkington, Rob Huff, Aron Taylor-Smith and Dan Cammish making it into shootout for pole position.

As soon as the pit lane opened, Turkington was immediately on the pace and he charged to a 29th career pole position while local star Cammish marked the signing of a new multi-year deal by snaring the remaining spot on the front row.

Ingram’s late charge was good enough for third however one of the stars of the show proved to Taylor-Smith who managed to hustle his Vauxhall Astra to fourth on the grid. Huff and Sutton, the latter another victim of track limit offences, rounded out the top six.

Completing the top ten overall was Chris Smiley, Tom Chilton, Josh Cook and Mikey Doble.