James Nash will start today’s first race of round eight at Rockingham Motor Speedway ahead of his main championship rivals in the Independent Drivers Championship after a solid display in qualifying yesterday.

Nash, who drives sole Triple Eight Racing Vauxhall Vectra this weekend, managed to record a time which was good enough to see him take fifth place on the grid ahead of both Matt Jackson and Andrew Jordan who are 9th and 8th respectively.

“I’m really pleased with P5. Coming into the weekend with all the extra weight we’ve been given by the series organisers, the aim was a top 10,” said Nash speaking after qualifying. “After Free Practice this morning I was quietly confident we could achieve top 6, so to do just that is really pleasing. Mind you, looking at the front row (both non-turbo cars) it does seem that normally aspirated are the cars to have now.”

The Newport Pagnell racer who sees Rockingham as his home race lies second in the Independent Drivers Championship just five points behind leader Mat Jackson.

“Its good too to have out-qualified Mat Jackson and Andrew Jordan in the Independents. Racing may of course be very different but at least I’ll be starting ahead of them both.”

Nash went on to say, “In race one I’ll be pushing as hard as I can. You’ve got to keep pushing yourself and try and see how high you can get.”

Race one starts at 1130GMT and you can watch all the action live on ITV4, online or follow our LIVE twitter service at @BTCCCrazyLive.

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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.