Gordon Shedden claimed pole position for the first of tomorrow’s three races at Oulton Park. The Honda driver lapped the Cheshire circuit in a time of 1m27.355 early on in the session and from then on his position at the front of the grid was never really threatened. Speaking to btcccrazy, he said: “I’m happy with that you want to start on pole rather than anywhere else. We worked hard all day to try and give us both a qualifying setup and a race setup.”

Shedden’s team mate Matt Neal will line up alongside him on the front row of the grid despite carrying the maximum 45kg of weight, the penalty that comes with being championship leader. Neal also set his best lap time early in the session which was cut short when it was red flagged with a couple of minutes remaining, following a huge shunt at Druids for Alex MacDowall.

Andy Neate qualified a surprise third in the Aon Ford Focus, easily his best ever BTCC qualifying performance. He will be joined on the second row of the grid by defending champion Jason Plato in the Chevrolet Cruze.

However the session belonged to Shedden who shared his thoughts for the race with btcccrazy. He said: “We’ve got both cars up there so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t both be on the podium in race one tomorrow, then obviously it gets more difficult as the day goes on but we’ll see; we’ll take it one step at a time.”

The first race begins at 12:15 on Sunday and can be seen live on ITV4.

For the full classification see here: www.tsl-timing.com/toca/2011/112203trg.pdf

Photo Credit: Pete Mainey (http://www.psmmotorsportimages.co.uk)

Tom Surgay is the Porsche Carrera Cup GB correspondant for 2011. Tom's currently studying English Language with Journalism at Huddersfield University. You can contact him at tom@btcccrazy.co.uk or on twitter @tsurgay.