Tom Chilton took the early initiative in the first free practice session of the day in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship to top the time sheets at the high-speed Thruxton circuit.

Chilton’s time of 1:18.551 was enough to take the fastest time of the session which was set on his first flying lap of the session after numerous installation laps in the Team Aon Ford Focus.

Tom Boardman was just 0.213 seconds off the pace in his Special Tuning Racing SEAT Leon. Boardman earlier led the session with his time of 1:18.764 before being dispossessed at the top of the order by the Ford of Chilton.

Coming off the back of his race three win at Donington Park, Mat Jackson was able to set the third fastest lap time of the session. Mat’s time was just under half a second slower than the pace set by Chilton in the older shape Ford Focus which is in fact Chilton’s car of 2010.

Jordan was followed by the two Hondas of Shedden and Neal covering 4th to 6th ahead of the Volkswagen Golf of Onslow-Cole. Tom’s initial pace was quick and that showed with him briefly occupying the 2nd fastest time of the day but was unable to improve on his time of 1:19.450 which put him in 7th.

Eighth fastest was Jason Plato in the fastest S2000 car in the session. His time of 1:19.450 was just under 1s off the pace. Incidentally Jason Plato’s Silverline Chevrolet Cruze was sporting a slight change to his livery today with an upside-down Silverline logo on the side of his car following his roll last time out at Donington Park.

The only casualty of the day came from Rob Austin. The NGTC Audi A4 completed just 2 installation laps before pulling into the pits in a plume of smoke after losing an oil plug. The Rob Austin Racing team are hopeful that Rob will make it out in Free Practice Two later today.

Race runs were on the agenda in this session with the lap record, which is currently held by Yvan Muller from 2002, rarely threatened with Chilton’s time being 1.2s shy of Yvans time. Teams concentrated their efforts in the session on achieving a race set-up with a lot of concern going onto tyre management on the harsh Thruxton racing surface.

Free practice one was the first chance we got to see what effect the new turbo restriction had on the turbo cars following the rule change which came into effect this weekend.

You can view the full time sheet here.

Photo Credit: Steve Kilvington

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.