AMD Honda’s Sam Tordoff took his first pole of the season, in a session troubled by track limits.

Tordoff, who’s had a troubled start to the 2019 season snatched pole by just 0.030 seconds and set a new lap record. He set a 1:15.511, just 0.101 seconds shy of Matt Neal’s record from last season.

Dan Cammish made it a Honda front row in the newer spec Honda Civic, despite suffering power steering failure during the session. It wasn’t plain sailing for all the Honda’s though, as Matt Neal, Matt Simpson and Josh Cook all suffered high speed spins.

But the main talking point of the session concerned track limits.

Several Drivers Exceed Their Limits

There weren’t many drivers that weren’t pinged at some point during Qualifying, with more than 20 lap times removed during the session.

This included Tordoff’s teammate Rory Butcher, who set a lap record, before having it invalidated by the race stewards. Ironically, the time would have been good enough to take pole by the end of Qualifying.

With under two minutes to go qualifying was red flagged with Tom Chilton’s Ford in the barriers. The Motorbase driver collided with Mark Blundell through the final chicane and lost control of his car.

After delays to repair the barriers, the session time was reset to 5 minutes, giving drivers one last shot.

But Tordoff remained top, and finally kick started his season after a poor first 6 races. Behind Tordoff and Cammish, Andrew Jordan bounced back from his Donington crash to qualify in third.

WSR teammate Colin Turkington was fourth, just 0.143 off pole, with Butcher completing the top five. Jason Plato qualified in a solid sixth, ahead of former teammate and championship leader Ash Sutton.

Matt Neal ended up in eighth, Rob Collard ninth and Tom Oliphant in tenth place. Donington race 3 winner Tom Ingram will have work to do from 14th on the grid.