The British Touring Car Championship roared back into action last weekend in front of a capacity crowd at Croft in North Yorkshire. The weather over the weekend was atypically Yorkshire, it was wet, very wet and then there was glorious sunshine and it was wet….again.
The Friday and Saturday saw heavy rain affect both days, the UK had been lashed all week by heavy rain which had caused flooding in different parts of the country, luckily Croft was unaffected by flooding. The Saturday qualifying session saw no less than 5 red flags which meant precious little green flag running, Andrew Jordan set the fastest time to start Race 1 from pole position.
The first race on Sunday saw Andrew Jordan take advantage of his BMW 330’s rear drive traction off the line, Jordan set sail and led from lights to flag. Despite this, Jordan still had a fight on his hands fending off a hard charging Chris Smiley & Tom Chilton, but despite this Jordan held them off with an imperious drive to take victory in Race 1
Race 2 saw Andrew Jordan start from the pole position once again, though Jordan’s task would be much more difficult in Race 2 due to the addition of success ballast thanks to victory in Race 1. Jordan made another strong start from the pole in Race 1, once again he set off sail, the BMW perfectly carving its way around the Croft circuit.
Behind, Colin Turkington made a strong start and made up ground on the cars in-front of him and he quickly gave chase to Andrew Jordan, but despite the Irishman’s tenacity, he wasn’t able to chase down Jordan. Dan Cammish meanwhile, who is local to the North East of the UK blazed a path through the field, overhauling the cars ahead of him. Behind the top three of Jordan, Turkington & Cammish, Chris Smiley & whilst fending off Ash Sutton came to grief as Sutton made an ill-timed move on Smiley, putting Smiley into the barriers.
Meanwhile, Andrew Jordan took the chequered flag and sealed victory number 2 of the weekend with another dominant display, taking another lights to flag victory.
The third race of the day featured the reverse grid draw, which saw Tom Chilton starting from the Pole Position in Race 3. The race started in damp conditions with Tyre choice playing a significant factor in proceedings. Chilton chose to start the race on wet tyres, a sound decision which gave him tremendous pace in the opening half of the race. As the race wore on and the track dried out, Chilton’s advantage was steadily being whittled away, the wet tyres on his Ford Focus RS overheating and struggling for grip.
The chasing pack, led by Josh Cook was starting to close down Chilton. Luckily, Chilton had built up enough of an advantage to keep Cook at bay and claim victory in Race 3, the tyres on his Ford Focus RS at this point were well and truly past their best in the drying conditions.
At the conclusion of the weekend, Colin Turkington leads the championship by 11 points from Josh Cook. The British Touring Car Championship will return on the weekend of June 28th at the challenging Cheshire parklands of Oulton Park, the weekends results and Championship standings are as below:
Race 1
- Andrew Jordan
- Chris Smiley
- Tom Chilton
- Colin Turkington
- Tom Oliphant
Race 2
- Andrew Jordan
- Colin Turkington
- Dan Cammish
- Matt Neal
- Ash Sutton
Race 3
- Tom Chilton
- Josh Cook
- Jason Plato
- Ash Sutton
- Matt Neal
Championship Standings
- Colin Turkington – 143 points
- Josh Cook – 132 points
- Ash Sutton – 130 points
- Andrew Jordan – 117 points
- Matt Neal – 115 points
