Darren Turner will start Round 16 of the 2007 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Donington Park tomorrow from the front row, having qualified his SEAT Leon 2nd on the grid. His SEAT Sport UK team-mate, Jason Plato, will start from row five, having qualified 9th.

In bright and breezy conditions, Darren set his best time early in qualifying, which put him briefly on pole before Gordon Shedden (Honda Civic) bettered it by just 0.068 seconds. It maintains Darren’s impressive record of qualifying on the first two rows of the grid in all of this year’s BTCC race meetings. But what made his qualifying performance even more impressive was that Darren had lost valuable track time in the morning, when he slid his Leon into the gravel trap on the outside of the Craner Curves on his first quick lap in Free Practice 1. He therefore only had the second 40 minute free practice session prior to qualifying to find a good set-up – half as much as all the other top runners.

Carrying 36kgs of success ballast, Jason had calculated that he could lap the 1.96 mile Donington Park National Circuit in 1min 13.8secs or 1min 13.9secs. He twice did an excellent first sector, before aborting the lap when he was then delayed in traffic. Taking that into account, if you add all his best sectors together, Jason would have recorded a 1min 13.85sec lap – so his actual best time of 1min 14.0sec wasn’t far off the best time he was aiming for.

With Championship rival Fabrizio Giovanardi qualifying in 15th and the second Vauxhall of Tom Chilton having all his times disallowed for failing a weight test, SEAT Sport UK has high hopes of a successful weekend in both the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ Championship.

DRIVER QUOTES

Jason Plato: “Our target was get into the top ten and that’s exactly what we’ve done. I had to abort my first two flying laps because of traffic and then I set my fastest lap on my second set of tyres. Darren did an excellent job to qualify on the front row and it’s given us a great opportunity to score good points in the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ Championship tomorrow.”

Darren Turner: “I’m pleased to have qualified on the front row, but I was quite surprised by the lap time. It was one of those nice laps which felt tidy and flowed well, but I’ve often had one of those laps and the time didn’t reflect it, so it was nice to see it all come together. We thought we’d qualify around eighth on the grid, so second is really great.”