Submitted on October 6th 2012 16:18 by James Mappin.

Jason Plato has taken the penultimate pole position of the championship at Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire this afternoon after a setting a stunningly fast time of 58.717s in his KX Momentum Racing MG6. Plato set the time roughly three-quarters of the way through the qualifying which had seen the likes of Austin and Onslow-Cole occupying the top spot earlier in the session.

Newsham had an excellent run in his Team ES Racing.com Vauxhall Vectra to put himself in 2nd position, followed by Matt Jackson in his Redstone Racing Ford Focus sat comfortably in 3rd. Despite the best efforts of the pair neither were able to knock Plato from pole position (incidentally also the fastest BTCC qualifying time at Silverstone), who’s lead extended to a tiny 2 tenths of a second ahead. However after the qualifying session was over it was announced that Newsham, who had been under investigation for his lap time had been penalised for driving off the track and therefore loses his best lap time and drops down to 5th, putting Mat Jackson on the front row.

Welch’s earlier impressive speed in the Proton was maintained from FP2 into qualifying with a time of 59.155s around the National circuit placing him 6th overall and onto the third row for tomorrow’s race.
There was no joy for the Honda duo of Neal and Shedden who failed to make an impact in the session. Matt Neal entertained spectators with a slide or two but was only able to manage 10th and will start from the 5th row of the grid tomorrow. The current championship leader Shedden, weighed down by 45kg of success ballast and struggling with some issues in his Honda will start from 19th, with a fastest lap time of 59.682s.

The top ten are as follows: Plato, Mat Jackson, Wrathall, Collard, Newsham, Welch, A Smith, Onslow-Cole, Morgan and Neal.

Just outside the top ten sits the Pirtek Racing Honda of current Independents Championship leader, Andrew Jordan who will be looking to extend his lead in the points table tomorrow ahead of the season finale at Brands Hatch GP circuit in two weeks time.

For the full classification click here.

Photo Credit: Pete Mainey

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.