Ferraris will start on pole for both races at Oulton Park after qualifying for the opening rounds of the Avon Tyres British GT Championship at the Cheshire venue.

The opening session saw newly-formed outfit CR Scuderia assert its authority by almost locking out the top of the timesheets, with only James Gornall in the Team Trimite Brookspeed Dodge Viper being able to launch a realistic challenge to the Ferraris.

Indeed, Gornall was the early pacesetter with a lap of 1min 41.194secs at the wheel of the Viper putting him into provisional pole ahead of Jeremy Metcalfe in the #16 Ferrari and Paddy Shovlin in the #15 430. However, that was as quick as Gornall would manage during the session, while two of the cars behind had more in hand.

Meadows was first to move ahead of the Viper to secure provisional pole and his lap of 1min 40.666secs would be good enough to take spot despite the best efforts of Shovlin who got consistently quicker as the session went on but could do no better than second – at least ensuring a front-row lock-out for the CR Scuderia.

Gornall ended up heading the second row ahead of Metcalfe, while David Jones and Oliver Morley will share row three in the Eurotech Ascari and Tech 9 Lamborghini. David Ashburns Porsche and Phil Burton's Ferrari completed the top eight.

In the GT4 class, the IMS Motorsport Ginetta G50 of Matt Nicholl-Jones led the way in 19th overall, less than a second behind the slowest of the GT3 machines. Hunter Abbott qualified second in the Rob Austin Racing Ginetta, with Charlie Hollings third in the first of the similar G50s of RPM.

In the second session, for the 'quicker' drivers, it was little surprise to see Allan Simonsen emerge as the man to beat with his best lap of 1min 38.995secs being comfortably quicker than anyone else was able to manage.

Behind the Dane however, there was an impressive performance from two new cars as Tom Ferrier put the Tech 9 Lamborghini into second on the grid and Richie Williams put the aggressive looking Trackspeed Porsche 997 into third place ahead of its first race.

Adam Wilcox secured a place on the second row with his final lap of the session in the VRS Motor Finance Ferrari, while the top six was completed by Michael Bentwood's Aston Martin DBRS9 and the Chad Racing Ferrari of Matt Griffin.

In GT4, Rob Austin took pole in his Ginetta ahead of Michael Broadhurst and Jamie Smyth in the Beechdean Aston.

For times for race one, CLICK HERE.

For times for race two, CLICK HERE.