Turk on second row for debut outing
Saturday, September 22, 2007
By Sammy Hamill
Colin Turkington will lead off the second row of the grid for his World
Touring Car Championship debut at Brands Hatch tomorrow.
The 24-year-old Portadown driver put in a superb qualifying performance in
his Team RAC BMW E90 at the Kent circuit this afternoon - and, indeed, only
lost a front row place in the dying seconds of the 30-minute session.
It had been former British Touring Car champion James Thompson who had
dominated practice and qualifying for Britain's round of the WTCC and looked
to have secured pole position in his Alfa Romeo ahead of Turkington.
But then Swiss driver Alain Menu produced a stunning lap in the final
minutes in his Chevrolet Lacetti to nudge Thompson back to second and
Turkington to third where he will share the second row of the grid with the
SEAT Leon of former F1 driver Tiago Monteiro from Portugal.
It was still a major achievement for Turkington as he sampled touring car
racing at world level for the first time.
He was using the same West Surrey Racing BMW in which he has won four times
in the British championship this season but was running on the WTCC's
Yokohama control tyres for the first time.
Nevertheless, he was never out of the top four in this afternoon's
qualifying session and looked to have secured a front row start when he set
his best lap of 1 min 33.082 secs - just four-hundredths of a second slower
than Thompson.
But then Menu came through to pip them both with the fast lap of 1-33.018.
Turkington's former Vauxhall team-mate in the BTCC, Yvan Muller, was fifth
fastest for SEAT.
Turkington was easily the fastest of the BMW drivers with Jorg Muller, third
in the championship, seventh quickest and reigning champion Andy Priualx
10th.
Brazilian Augusto Farfus, who leads Priualx by one point in the series,
could only qualify 13th and starts back on the seven row.
Meanwhile, Brian McGillin in his Hyundai Accent led the Bushwhacker Rally
after six stages this afternoon.
But the Omagh driver was just three seconds ahead of the Ford Focus of
Northern Ireland championship leader Stephen Moore and six in front of the
Subaru of Sean Devine.
But there was trouble for Moore's big title rival, Glenn Allen, who was back
in 17th in a borrowed Toyota Corolla.
