Jason Plato will start the first race of round nine in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship from pole position after his time of 1:31.874 was good enough to beat the field of twenty-nine cars.

The two-time British Touring Car Champion led the session from the get go and it took him just 5 minutes to top the timing screen with a time of 1:32.264 in a session which was thwarted by two red flag periods. Plato went on to improve his time and was the only driver to dip into the 1:31′s.

Andrew Jordan left it late but one good lap from the 22-year old was all it took to put him on the front row of the grid for tomorrows first race of the day and a sign that he’s returning to the sort of form which saw him take his first race win of the season earlier in the season.

“It’s a weight off our shoulders. We just need to make sure we can turn our good qualifying position into a good result but it’s certainly nice to be up there from the start,” said Jordan. “I got a bit of traffic on my best lap but I don’t think it was enough to allow me to go as fast as Jason [Plato] but to start second gives us a good boost.”

Occupying the third place on the grid will be the Triple Eight Racing Vauxhall Vectra of James Nash. Nash, who took his maiden BTCC victory last time out at Rockingham left it till the last lap of the session to post his time which was just 0.4s shy of pole position.

Alec MacDowall managed to post a time good enough to start ahead of the two team-mates, Shedden and Neal, who are tied for the championship lead and start 5th and 6th respectively.

Mat Jackson managed to regain the form which he had in the earlier part of the season and will start from 7th ahead of O’Neill, Onslow-Cole and Tom Chilton who rounds out the top ten.

Two red flag periods made the qualifying session very much a stop-start affair, the first of which was for Chris James who lost his left rear wheel on the exit of Hawthorn Bend, one of the fastest parts of the circuit.

The second red flag was for the stricken Toyota Avensis of Frank Wrathall. Wrathall, who had just set his first flying lap of the session, ran wide at Clearways and ended up backwards and into the barrier putting an end to his session. Despite only completing half of the session and two laps, Wrathall will start from 14th on the grid.

Elsewhere the two debutants of Ollie Jackson and Chris Swanwick will start their first races of their BTCC career from 15th and 27th respectively.

For full classification, click here.

Photo Credit: Pete Mainey (www.psmmotorsportimages.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.