Ant Whorton-Eales headed his championship rivals in practice ahead of the seventh meeting of the 2015 Renault UK Clio Cup season at Rockingham this weekend.
Whorton-Eales posted the best time of the day in the second session with a 1m 29.602s effort, though it only secured him top spot by the narrowest of margins, with championship leader Ash Hand four hundredths of a second adrift.
Fellow title contenders Paul Rivett and Ashley Sutton both finished within three tenths of a second of Whorton-Eales, with the top four drivers all lapping under the existing qualifying record of 1m 29.904s set by Jack Goff in 2012.
Sutton had earlier topped the timesheets by half a second from his Team Pyro stablemate Hand in the opening session, however all the drivers in the field went on to improve their times in the second outing.
The big surprise of the opening session was the instant pace of debutant Luke Kidsley, who posted the third fastest time in his JamSport Racing Clio. He went on to finish the day sixth overall, narrowly edging out his team-mate Tom Grundy.
Charlie Ladell was fifth fastest, while his WDE Motorsport team-mate Rory Green looks set for one of his most competitive meetings of the season so far after posting the eighth best time ahead of Team Cooksport duo Rory Collingbourne and George Jackson.
In the Masters Cup, late entrant Peter Felix replicated his class-leading performance from his last outing at Croft with a best time of 1m 31.070s, putting him nearly eight tenths of a second clear of Mark Howard and Graham Field.
Full testing times can be found here.
