BTC Racing’s Josh Cook powered to his sixth career victory, in the first Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Oulton Park, taking the win from pole sitter, Rory Butcher in second and Halford’s Yuasa Racing’s Dan Cammish. Currently, the win is under investigation subject to the ride height test in Parc Ferme.
The heavens opened as the cars made their way out the pitlane for the first of two formation laps and these were the conditions that remained for the 15 lap race. Team HARD’s Carl Boardley went off at Old Lodge on the first of the two laps delaying the start whilst the barriers were repaired.
As racing eventually got underway, Motorbase’s Rory Butcher powered off the line to retain the lead into the first corner ahead of Colin Turkington, who made an early lunge to try and take the race lead. Cook, having lined up in second, had a poor start but this only made him more determined to recover.
A battle between Cook and West Surrey Racing’s Tom Oliphant over the first few laps provided much entertainment as Oliphant defended position superbly. Cook threw his BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R down the inside of Oliphant to take third place at Cascades. Cook was soon on the tail of Oliphant’s team mate Turkington and soon ticked off the four time BTCC champion, and took second place through Knickerbrook.
The safety car was deployed on lap four after Ollie Brown collided with barriers at Old Hairpin following a lock up into the corner. The Team Hard racer limped back round to the pits to repair the damage. Cook took advantage of the restart on lap six, with an impressive battle between Butcher and Cook. Butcher lost out on the cutback and Cook was now leading the race. Upon hitting traffic, Butcher now found himself under pressure from Cammish. Cammish’s teammate Matt Neal was given the mechanical warning flag and made his way back to the pits.
Further back, the Team BMW 3 Series of Turkington was appearing to be struggling in the wet conditions, with the added maximum ballast, which saw the MB Motorsport Honda Civic of Jake Hill breeze past at Old Hall at the midway point of the race. Hill finished just shy of the podium in fourth, with Turkington in fifth.
BTC Racing’s Tom Chilton had a very comfortable race, with little to no competition from fellow racers, crossing the line in sixth place, just ahead of Ingram who closed in on the Surrey racer over the last lap.
Behind Chilton, we saw a three-way battle for position between Adam Morgan, Ash Sutton and Tom Ingram. The Toyota Gazoo Racing UK with Ginster’s Corolla of Ingram crossed the line in seventh place after an intense race long battle with the Laser Tools Racing Infiniti of Sutton, with Sutton momentarily sending Ingram into a slide after making contact.
The Carlube Mercedes of Morgan soon found Ingram up behind after breaking away from the battling youngsters. Ingram took seventh from Morgan in the latter stages of the race.
With Morgan finishing in eighth and Sutton in ninth, it was Chris Smiley of Excelr8 Motorsport who rounded off the top ten.
The final classification can be found here: https://www.tsl-timing.com/file/?f=TOCA/2020/203403rc1trg.pdf
The next BTCC race is live on ITV4 at 14:50pm.
