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A drama-filled qualifying session at Rockingham saw Silverline Chevrolet's Jason Plato take first place, a mere 0.160 seconds behind fellow Cruze (albeit an older model) driver and fan favourite, Paul O'Neill.
Rob Austin continued a strong weekend by claiming third place and was confident he could have gone higher - a .177 second quicker lap in FP2 showed the team was capable of it and would have netted him 2nd.
The top ten was rounded out by Honda Racing's Matt Neal, James Nash of 888 with Collins Contractors, Gordon Shedden in his Honda, Frank Wrathall in the orange Toyota Avensis which is fast becoming a regular sighting at the sharp end of the grid ahead of Pirtek's Andrew Jordan in 8th, Mat Jackson 9th and AmD Milltek Racing.com's Martin Byford in 10th - rewarding the hard work that's gone into the Volkswagon Golf by the team.
Nick Foster was the highest of the WSR guys in 11th, ahead of team-mate Rob Collard in 16th. A frustrating qualifying for Aon who have since identified a problem. They'll at least have each other for support on the grid - with Neate in 12th ahead of Onslow-Cole and Chilton. Alex MacDowall will start 15th, don't expect him to stay there for long.
The remainder of the grid shapes up like this: Boardman, Welch, new boy Michael Caine, Newsham, Smith, George, Gilham, James and Liam Griffin whose session ended on the back of a pick-up truck following a little unintentional off-roading.
It was Liam's crash that led to the session being red-flagged and setting in motion a chain reaction of events that saw Plato and Neal almost coming to blows in the pit-lane. With three and a half minutes on the clock and competition fierce to get in as many qualifying laps as possible all the cars took to the track. Plato fought his way quickly through the pack, to the expense of Neal's Honda.
With no-one improving Plato claimed his number one space and pulled into the pits to let Matt know his position, what happens next can be found on YouTube and although no hits were landed it's fair to say tempers were running particularly high! Both drivers have since been fined £1000 and had 3 penalty points added to their licence, with a suspended six-place penalty drop in place for the remainder of the year. By Samantha Wilcox, Photo by Marc Waller
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