Turkington leads Cook in opening Thruxton practice

Team BMW's Colin Turkington has the set pace during the opening British Touring Car Championship practice session ahead of the Vauxhalls at Thruxton.

The two-time champion is looking to bounce back from an indifferent start to the season and has fired an early warning shot to his rivals by setting the quickest time during the first 40-minute practice of the weekend.

Turkington ended the session 0.115s quicker than Donington Park winner Josh Cook in second after setting a 1 minute 16.268s lap around the Hampshire circuit.

Incidentally, Turkington scored BMW's 100th BTCC victory at Thruxton this time last season.

Cook's Power Maxed TAG Racing team mate Senna Proctor completed the top-three in third, albeit over 0.4s off Turkington's front-running pace.

Motorbase Performance's Tom Chilton was fourth quickest aboard his Ford Focus RS machine, just 0.005s quicker than Honda's Dan Cammish in fifth.

Jack Goff secured his first podium with Eurotech at this circuit last season and the WIX Racing driver looks set to be in contention to repeat his 2017 result after emerging from FP1 in sixth.

Defending champion Ashley Sutton followed closely behind as the leading Subaru Levorg runner in seventh, as Andrew Jordan, Mike Bushell and Rob Collard completed the remainder of the top-ten order in eighth, ninth and tenth.

Elsewhere, current points leader Tom Ingram was 21st fastest, two-places behind two-time champion Jason Plato in 19th.