Turkington quickest in opening practice as BTCC kicks off

Team BMW's Colin Turkington picked up from where he left off to top the timesheets in the first practice of the 2020 British Touring Car Championship season at Donington Park.

With the BTCC field taking to the track for the first time in anger for almost eight months, it was the defending four-time champion who fired the first warning shot of the 2020 season to set the early pace by 0.154s ahead of three-time champion Matt Neal in the Honda.

Despite the enforced four-month layoff, the field hit the ground running straight away with Turkington's 1'09.446s time beating Jason Plato's long-standing qualifying lap record from 2014 by just under half-a-tenth.

Just 0.480s separated the top-ten running order around the former Grand Prix venue.

While Neal followed the time topping BMW 330i M Sport in second, Ashley Sutton confirmed Laser Tools Racing have made great strides with the Infiniti Q50 over the winter break after the 2017 champion set the third fastest time in his first session with his new squad.

Running under the Toyota Gazoo Racing UK banner for the first time this season, Tom Ingram enjoyed a solid start to the opening weekend after setting the fourth fastest time ahead of last year's joint BTCC runner-up Dan Cammish, who ended the first session in fifth for Team Dynamics.

Having led a reasonable chunk of the morning running, Tom Chilton ended up sixth fastest on his debut for BTC Racing ahead of his Honda Civic Type R team mate Josh Cook in seventh.

Jake Hill followed up in the older spec Honda Civic Type R FK2 challenger, run by the new MB Motorsport outfit, in eighth, while Chris Smiley ensured the new Hyundai finished in top-ten on its practice debut with the ninth fastest time.

Team BMW's Tom Oliphant rounded out the top-ten practice order in tenth.