Tordoff clinches last gasp pole at Thruxton

AmD Tuning's Sam Tordoff has clinched a dramatic last gasp British Touring Car Championship pole position after beating Dan Cammish in the dying seconds of qualifying at Thruxton.

Tordoff has endured a torrid start to the 2019 season, but the Honda Civic Type R driver's pace was finally rewarded with his first pole of the year, by just 0.030s ahead of Cammish.

With the qualifying shootout red flagged with less than two minutes on the clock, it was Andrew Jordan who looked set to secure his first pole position in five years after the 2013 BTCC champion demoted his team mate Colin Turkington off the top spot by a slender margin.

However, an altercation between the Audi S3 of former F1-driver Mark Blundell and the Ford Focus RS of Tom Chilton at the final chicane, meant the countdown was extended to a five-minute shootout once the session was resumed.

It was within the final sequence of runs where Honda's Cammish looked set to translate his time topping performance from FP2 with pole position come qualifying.

Cammish ultimately had to settle for second after Tordoff dipped below the benchmark with a 1 minute 15.511s lap - breaking Matt Neal's 2018 pole position lap record - with moments to spare.

Unable to respond to Honda's late surge, Jordan and Turkington settled for the second row in third and fourth, while Rory Butcher completed the top-five order for the AmD squad in fifth.

Amid the countless number of lap times being deleted due to track limits, Butcher, at one stage, also looked a strong candidate for pole position, but the Honda driver shares the third row of the grid with two-time Jason Plato in sixth.

Plato enjoyed another strong qualifying and looked set to improve his time on his final lap, but the Vauxhall Astra driver fell just short during the final sector.

Championship leader Ashley Sutton was another driver to recover back up the timesheets after seeing his best lap deleted earlier in the session. Sutton will start from seventh ahead of three-time Matt Neal on row four.

Rob Collard and Tom Oliphant complete the remainder of the top-ten grid order in ninth and tenth.