Arden Motorsport’s Alex Connor made the perfect start to his weekend, lighting up the timesheets en route to a double pole position in the F4 British Championship certified by FIA – powered by Ford EcoBoost at Silverstone.

Connor’s benchmark time of 56.256 was agonisingly close – 0.003 seconds, in fact – from setting a new qualifying lap record around the 1.6-mile National circuit, and secured him top spot in qualifying for the first time this season, beating Argenti’s Casper Stevenson by 0.031s.

Courtesy of their second-fastest lap times, the pair will also share the front row for the ITV2-televised final race of the weekend tomorrow.

Championship rivals Luke Browning  and Zak O’Sullivan will share the second row on both occasions, but it’s the Carlin racer with the upper hand after qualifying, the margin between them a nail-biting 0.050s.

Browning held the upper hand throughout the first half of the session whilst the majority pitted after their installation laps, but the Fortec racer was pegged back late on and will have to fight his way back through his title rivals if he is to secure a return to the winner’s circle in Northamptonshire.

In another ultra-competitive session for Ford’s rising stars at the ‘Home of British Motorsport’, the top five was rounded out by Thruxton hat-trick hero James Hedley, the JHR racer just a further six thousandths back.

His team mate Abbi Pulling was next – but ahead of Hedley on second-quickest times for race three – whilst Arden similarly securing the bragging rights in the Rookie Cup stakes, Frederick Lubin the leading class entry in that regard with seventh.

His chief rival Christian Mansell (Carlin) could only manage tenth, the pair split by Lubin’s Arden team mate Roman Bilinski and the second Argenti challenger of Reema Juffali in eighth and ninth respectively.

Matias Zagazeta rounds out the field in 11th, the entire grid split by just 0.8 seconds across a frenetic 20-minute session.

The opening race of the weekend from Silverstone is scheduled to get underway at 15:50 (BST).

Grid for Race 1:

Grid for Race 3: