Championship leader Andrew Jordan sent out a strong message to his title rivals by topping second practice at Brands Hatch, the session marred by a big shunt for Aron Smith.
The opening 10 minutes of the session ended with dramatic scenes when a seemingly innocuous off into the gravel trap at Druids for Liam Griffin was overshadowed by a bigger off for Airwaves Racing team-mate Smith, whose Ford Focus ended perched on its side.
The Airwaves car was taking avoiding action from Ollie Jackson and Frank Wrathall‘s Toyota Avensis machines, and lost control before heading into the barriers climbing up the hill towards the hairpin.
Jason Plato had topped proceedings up until that point, ironically from Smith who emerged from the crash thankfully unscathed.
After the lengthy clear-up, a 15-minute session was the conclusion to second practice, Plato and Jordan staged a fight for the number one spot on the time sheets, the #77 Eurotech Honda Civic finishing with the spoils.
Jordan’s two late efforts edged out MG KX Momentum Racing‘s Plato by a mere 0.005s, Jordan’s Honda of course carrying 45kg of success ballast to compensate for his championship lead.
The second MG6 of Sam Tordoff joined the top three by the end of the session, leapfrogging the championship contenders Gordon Shedden and Colin Turkington with his final attempt.
Behind the top five runners, Wrathall ended his practice session sixth ahead of Tom Onslow-Cole – finally driving a Ford Focus with identical boost levels to his rivals – the top 10 rounded out by Adam Morgan, Smith and Rob Collard.
Matt Neal could only end the session down in 13th place, ahead of Warren Scott who performed well in his Team HARD/BMR Restart Volkswagen Passat.
Lea Wood again led the way in the Jacks Sears Trophy class from Griffin, Shaun Hollamby rounding out the 25 entries in his AmDTuning Volkswagen Golf.
– Qualifying gets underway at 15:45, and you can follow the action here on thecheckeredflag.co.uk, and on Twitter through @tcfBTCC.
