Neal narrowly beats Shedden to Thruxton pole

Matt Neal has narrowly edged his Honda team mate Gordon Shedden in lap-record pace to claim his first pole position since 2012 for tomorrow's first British Touring Car Championship race at Thruxton.

The triple champion's 16th career pole has given Neal the ideal opportunity to clinch his 60th win in the series, which would equal four-time champion Andy Rouse's victory tally.

Neal's pole-lap came at the expense of his Team Dynamics team mate Shedden, who leaped to the top of the timesheets with 16 minutes of the shootout to go.

Despite carrying maximum ballast, Shedden had already obliterated Tom Ingram's existing pole position record but Neal went even faster shortly after with a 1 minute 16.040s effort.

Neal did have to survive one late scare as Tom Chilton looked set to disturb the top placings after setting a fastest first sector.

However, a sudden flag triggered by Jeff Smith's first corner off meant the session was briefly halted before resuming for a final five-minute shootout.

That effectively decided the grid order as almost everyone, except Vauxhall's Chilton, who managed to improve up the order to eighth.

Chilton's rise to eighth, though, proved to be short lived as the Vauxhall driver's time was deleted after being found to have set his best lap during a yellow-flag zone.

Behind the leading factory Hondas, Jack Goff has nestled his Civic Type-R firmly into contention in third ahead of championship leader Tom Ingram, who defied the penalty of carrying 66 kilos of ballast to qualify fourth.

Rob Austin followed his Toyota Avensis stablemate in fifth position ahead of the late casualty of Smith in sixth position.

Adam Morgan was the top Mercedes qualifier in seventh to share the fourth row with Subaru's Ashley Sutton, Team BMW's Colin Turkington and Motorbase Performance's Mat Jackson all moving up to eighth, ninth and tenth as a result of Chilton's penalty.