Hill beats ‘junior’ team-mates in BMW battle

Reigning champion Jake Hill put in a strategic masterclass to take his second British Touring Car Championship victory of the season in race one at Knockhill.

The diminutive Kentishman sat in third place in the early stages behind his warring team-mates Charles Rainford and Daryl DeLeon, but came through on a circuit where the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sports appear to hold the advantage on pace.

Poleman Rainford held off the early attacks from DeLeon by setting the race’s fastest lap, before on the eighth lap the Anglo-Filipino dived down the inside at Duffus Dip. But there was no way DeLeon was going to make the corner, and he shot wide onto the grass before rejoining the track at the Leslie left-hander in the lead.

One and a half laps later, DeLeon conceded the advantage he’d earned by going off-track and allowed Rainford back in front at the hairpin.

That triggered a slide down the order for DeLeon, who had collected grass in the BMW’s radiator and had to nurse the car to the finish.

At the half-distance point of the scheduled 24 laps, Hill took advantage of Rainford’s overuse of TOCA Turbo Boost in his early defence from DeLeon by getting a run and probing around the outside of the hairpin.

He remained side by side with Rainford as they accelerated up the start-finish straight, with Hill’s momentum carrying him to the front just as they reached the braking zone for Duffus Dip.

Hill built up an advantage of more than two seconds over the next several laps and all looked plain sailing, only for the Power Maxed Racing Cupra Leon of Nick Halstead to enter the equation.

Backmarker Halstead was on the verge of being lapped when Hill was caught out at Leslie, nudging the Cupra into a spin.

Halstead then allowed the car to reverse backwards so that he ended up with his rear wheels in the gravel trap, and the safety car was called.

But there was no threat to Hill over the three-lap sprint to the finish, and he took the flag 1.417 seconds in front of Rainford.

“I’m a bit teary after that one,” admitted Hill, who was sidelined from the last round at Croft due to labyrinthitis.

“You question whether you can do it after what happened over the past two weeks, but we smoked them, didn’t we?

“I was a bit disappointed not getting pole, but we turned up in the race and delivered properly.”

Of Halstead, Hill added: “Not very impressed – I was flashing my lights for a lap so he could see I was coming. Then he closed the gap and braked.

“I’m sorry Nick. No, I’m not sorry, because you should drive better than that.”

While the leading BMWs and fifth qualifier Senna Proctor used the soft Goodyears in this race, fourth-starting championship leader Tom Ingram was on the medium tyre.

He allowed Proctor, his team-mate in the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback squad, into fourth place on lap three to have a crack at the BMWs.

Both then passed the fading DeLeon before, on the final lap, Proctor braked as they approached the finish line in order to allow Ingram into third.

The move not only allowed Ingram extra points but, with his already having used the medium tyre anyway, it means the rule that the top three in race one have to use the hardest remaining compound from their allocation for race two has no effect on him – and that Proctor can use the soft again. 

“Senna’s put the word ‘team’ into team-mate, hasn’t he?” acknowledged Ingram. “I was a bit emotional after that – I definitely owe him a beer or 12.”

Dan Cammish had a solid run to fifth in the leading Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST, while Aiden Moffat (WSR BMW) just held off Ash Sutton (Alliance Ford) in the fight for sixth, with Sutton now dropping to 14 points behind Ingram in the standings. 

DeLeon brought his wounded BMW home eighth, while Aron Taylor-Smith spent most of the race fending off an entertaining queue of cars before taking ninth in his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport. Sam Osborne completed the top 10 in his Alliance Ford after passing Adam Morgan’s Excelr8 Hyundai on the last lap.

BTCC Knockhill – Race 1 results