Tom Chilton will start tomorrow’s first race at Croft tomorrow from pole position after admitting he was ‘lucky’ to do so as he led his LPG Ford Focus to a time of 1:24.629s in the dying moments of the qualifying session.

Tomorrow will be the third time that Chilton has started from pole this season so far despite having an excursion off the track into the gravel early on in the session.

The 25 year old said to btcc.net, “I only just got back out of the gravel trap when I’d been off. My mechanics did a great job with the gaffer tape! Then on my second run, when I set the time, I hit a kerb really hard and thought I’d punctured a tyre but it all held together. But I knew it was my last chance so gave it my all. It was the perfect lap but I admit I was very lucky.”

Gordon Sheddon narrowly missed out on his second pole position of the season by 0.077s but will start on the front row of the grid alongside Chilton. The Scot led for much of the session before a last minute re-shuffle of the times meant that he would drop to 2nd.

Rob Collard made it into the top three with young Alex MacDowall close behind in fourth. Today was the third time that Alex had out qualified his experienced team-mate, Jason Plato, making it 3-2 to Alex this season.

Matt Neal and Jason Plato will start tomorrow’s first race from 5th and 6th respectively after carrying success ballast for being 1st and 2nd in the championship.

A BTCC qualifying debutant was also on show today with Daniel Lloyd making his first competitive run out in the Triple Eight Engineering Vauxhall Vectra. Daniel managed to record a time of 1:28.858 which was good enough to give the 18 year old from Huddersfield an 11th place grid slot for tomorrow.

Elsewhere on the grid Andy Neate will start from last on the grid after serving his 6 place grid penalty from Oulton Park despite Lea Wood not being able to record a lap due to a broken drive shaft and Shaun Hollamby having his times wiped after failing ride height scrutineering.

Photo Credit: Steven Knightley (www.sjkphotography.co.uk)

James Mappin is the editor-in-chief covering the British Touring Car Championship. You can contact him at james@btcccrazy.co.uk, on twitter @BTCCCrazy or on his personal twitter account @jamesmappin.