Alain Menu continued his love affair with the Brands Hatch circuit to secure pole position for the British rounds of the World Touring Car Championship.

The Swiss ace, winner at Brands Hatch in each of the last three seasons, left it till late in the second phase of qualifying to secure his place at the head of the field with a lap of 1min 33.521secs at the wheel of his Chevrolet Cruze.

That put Menu ahead of BMW driver Andy Priaulx at the front of the grid, but Priaulx's hopes of a front row start were then ended when Rob Huff also went quicker to secure a lock-out of the front row for the Chevrolet team.

Priaulx was forced to settle for third as a result ahead of Augusto Farfus, who had paced both free practice sessions and the first phase of qualifying – although the Brazilian left it to the last minute to secure a place in the top-ten shootout.

Rickard Rydell and Gabriele Tarquini will share the third row of the grid after leading the SEAT challenge, while Nicola Larini, Jorg Muller, Tiago Monteiro and Norbert Michelisz complete the top ten – the latter securing top Independent honours in the process ahead of his one-off outing with SUNRED Engineering.

Points leader Yvan Muller missed out on the top-ten shootout thanks to Farfus' late lap and will line-up eleventh ahead of Felix Porteiro and guest driver Robert Dahlgren in a session where the top 14 drivers were covered by barely a second.

Jaap van Lagen was again quickest of the LADA drivers in 19th place, with James Thompson's new Priora down in 25th.