Oliphant leads BMW practice domination

Tom Oliphant has topped the timesheets in FP2 ahead of his BMW team mates Andrew Jordan and Colin Turkington as the West Surrey Racing outfit lock-out the top-three order ahead of qualifying for tomorrow's British Touring Car Championship season opener at Brands Hatch.

With light drizzle hitting the Indy circuit for the second 40-minute session of the day, Oliphant's 48.475s lap time proved to be almost 0.5s slower than his team mate Jordan's FP1 effort set earlier in the morning.

Oliphant managed to set his best effort earlier in the session, while the majority of the field were forced to play catch-up during the dying minutes of the running as the conditions began to slightly improve.

A brief red-flag, triggered by Aiden Moffat's off with 15-minutes to go, also cost the field precious time to dial their cars in for this afternoon's 30-minute qualifying shootout.

Behind Oliphant, Jordan and Turkington both improved late on in the session to ensure all three BMW 330i M Sport machines ended practice in the top-three ahead of a rejuvenated Jason Plato in fourth position.

Embarking on his first qualifying with the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall squad, Plato was another to set his best lap early in the session and led the initial running, but was ultimately unable to keep the BMWs behind his Astra in the timesheets.

Motorbase Performance's Tom Chilton completed the top-five order in fifth, while Tom Ingram improved late in the session to put his Toyota Corolla in sixth.

Jake Hill was seventh aboard his AmD prepared Audi S3, ahead of Dan Cammish, Ollie Jackson and Sam Tordoff, who were eighth, ninth and tenth.