Atomic front row at Knockhill.
Former Team Atomic Kitten team-mates Colin Turkington and Gareth Howell staged a front row lockout after qualifying for the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill in Scotland.
Turkington in his VX Racing Astra put in the fastest lap to displace Team Halfords driver Dan Eaves from the top spot on the timing monitors and no one else was able to beat the driver who attended university at nearby Stirling university.
Former Team Atomic Kitten team-mates Colin Turkington and Gareth Howell staged a front row lockout after qualifying for the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill in Scotland.
Turkington in his VX Racing Astra put in the fastest lap to displace Team Halfords driver Dan Eaves from the top spot on the timing monitors and no one else was able to beat the driver who attended university at nearby Stirling university.
In the dying seconds of the session, however, Turkington's pole faced its sternest test as Gareth Howell, in the third Team Dynamics Honda Integra, set a time one tenth off Turkington's to mean that Howell joins his former MG team-mate from the 2002 BTCC season on the front row.
The second row on the grid should be an interesting battle as title rivals Yvan Muller and Matt Neal line up alongside each other. The start on Sunday morning should be quite interesting...
Row three sees Eaves, the slowest Team Halfords car, and Tom Chilton in the Arena Motorsports Civic line up alongside each other.
Despite their weight break of 15 kilos lighter on base weight and topping the times in the easlier practice session, SEAT's best was from Jason Plato with the seventh fastest time, only just better than James Kaye's Synchro Motorsport Civic, which briefly topped the timing monitors during the session.
Despite his smash in the earlier practice session, James Pickford was back out on track after a sterling effort by the SEAT Sport UK squad, though the macclesfield-based driver could only manage the twelfth fastest time, half a second adrift of a disappointed Rob Collard with woes for his WSR MG.
It was a good session however for Mark Proctor in Collard's old Astra, with Proctor out-qualifying both HPI Racing Friends Reunited Lexus and the Bio-ethanol powered Tech-Speed Astra of Fiona Leggate.
Top ten
1. Colin Turkington 54.076secs
2. Gareth Howell 54.173secs
3. Yvan Muller 54.225secs
4. Matt Neal 54.233secs
5. Dan Eaves 54.255secs
6. Tom Chilton 54.373secs
7. Jason Plato 54.467secs
8. James Kaye 54.520secs
9. Gavin Smith 54.543secs
10. Luke Hines 54.633secs
