Mike Bushell has made it nine pole positions out of the last ten up for grabs in the Renault UK Clio Cup with another supreme performance in qualifying at Rockingham.
2014 champion Bushell set the pace with a best effort of 1m 29.741s in an extremely close-fought session, with one second splitting the whole eighteen car grid.
It was Bushell’s Pyro squad who led the way during the session with four drivers in the top six – the only non-Pyro machine in the top four being WDE Motorsport’s Paul Rivett.
Finishing up just 0.135s shy of Bushell’s best, Rivett secured a pair of front-row starts as he aims to keep his hopes of a fourth title this season alive across the weekend.
Pyro duo Josh Price and David Dickenson were third and fourth, with stablemate Senna Proctor in sixth behind Max Coates – less than four tenths of a second splitting the top six.
Luke Kidsley, Lee Pattison and Paul Streather were next up, while title contender Ant Whorton-Eales was an uncharacteristic tenth in his JamSport Racing machine.
Whorton-Eales is an improved sixth on the grid for the second race however, with Graduate Cup runners Price, Proctor and Coates filling positions three, four and five respectively.
On their second outings in the series meanwhile, ex-BTCC racer Chris Smiley picked up twelfth and tenth place starts for the two encounters, with Shayne Deegan in eighteenth and seventeenth.
Full qualifying results can be found here.
