British Touring Car Championship leader Colin Turkington picked up from where he left off at Oulton Park by topping a rain-interrupted first practice session at Croft.
The Northern Irishman enters into the weeken d’s action nine points clear of Honda’s Gordon Shedden after his double victory at Oulton Park, and shrugged off the maximum 45kg of ballast and a longer first gear by moving to the top of the times in the first 10 minutes of the session.
The West Surrey Racing BMW driver improved his time to a 1m24.498s effort before the rain arrived after 10 minutes, the switch to wet tyres meaning that Turkington stayed top for the remainder of the session.
Turkington finished 0.505s ahead of Andrew Jordan‘s Pirtek Racing Honda Civic, while Adam Morgan showed a fine improvement in pace with the WIX Racing Mercedes A-Class by finishing just over a second behind Turkington in third.
Nick Foster made it two WSR BMWs in the top four, ahead of the two MG KX Clubcard Fuel Save BTCC Team machines of local drivers Jason Plato and Sam Tordoff.
Glynn Geddie impressed with seventh place in the United Autosports Toyota Avensis, just 1.8s off the pace of Turkington and top Toyota ahead of Tom Ingram who was next up in eighth.
The top 10 was rounded out by Matt Neal and Alain Menu in the first of the Yuasa Racing Honda Civics and BMR Racing Volkswagen Passats respectively.
Martin Depper almost broke into the top 10 in the second Pirtek Racing Civic, while Shedden could only manage 15th in the interrupted session.
A red flag also broke up the opening minutes of proceedings, caused by a technical problem for Aiden Moffat‘s Chevrolet Cruze.
Rob Austin meanwhile suffered slight damage to his Audi A4 taking avoiding action from the Ford Focus of Fabrizio Giovanardi.
Second practice gets underway at 12:00 and you can follow all the action with www.thecheckeredflag.co.uk and on Twitter via @tcfBTCC.
