Dan Cammish fended off Josh Cook to take his first full-points British Touring Car Championship race victory of the season in the opener at Oulton Park.
But while one of the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium battalion was supreme, Cammish’s championship-leading team-mate Ash Sutton was in the wars on his way to seventh position. With closest rival Tom Ingram finishing third, Sutton’s points cushion at the top of the table has come down to 52.
The race began with the circuit damp off line and, particularly, under the trees at the Druids and Lodge corners at the end of the lap.
Cammish got away from pole position in front, while Sutton got inside the front-row-starting Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport of Cook to take second place into the first corner at Old Hall.
Sutton then moved to the outside of Cammish at Cascades. On the inside line, Cook’s trajectory slid him into four-time champion Sutton, who was forced off track when their bumpers were locked together before clambering back onto the circuit in eighth place.
Cook, with the full 10 laps of TOCA Turbo Boost usage to the four of Cammish, got on the button for the first time on the second lap, and looked to the outside of the hairpin in a bid for the lead.
He was shaping up for another move on the third lap when the safety car was called. The Alliance Ford of Lewis Selby had clanged the barriers on the approach to Lodge and, although the BTCC rookie got the car safely back to the pits, some trackside advertising was strewn across the circuit, forcing an interlude of orange-suited action to recover it.
Photo by: JEP
Cammish immediately pulled out a gap on Cook at the restart, with Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback – with access to just two laps of TTB – moving in to challenge the Toyota.
Cook set fastest lap through more TTB usage to escape Ingram and challenge Cammish once more, but his surplus of boost was diminishing and, once the leading duo levelled out with four laps remaining, it was clear that the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman had things under control.
Cammish nabbed the fastest lap point from Cook, who was able to keep Ingram at bay, the leading trio covered by just 1.173 seconds at the finish.
“The track was noticeably drier at the start than on the laps to the grid,” said Cammish, “but being the first driver to discover it is always sketchy. But that car is as it arrived this weekend, and we’ve hit the ground running.
“It was just about trying to manage it. I knew Josh would have the opportunities, but every lap that went by when he used it [TTB] and had been unsuccessful, that was an opportunity for me. I just needed to get to parity.”
Aron Taylor-Smith made it two Speedworks-run Toyotas in the top four with a lonely run at the wheel of his Laser Tools-liveried car. With the top three from this race forced to use the hard-compound Goodyears in race two, Taylor-Smith will be the highest-placed driver on the grid who can use the preferable softs.
Photo by: JEP
Behind the Irishman was a frantic battle, with Sutton in the middle of it.
After his first-lap snafu, Sutton had quickly cleared the Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloons of Aiden Moffat and Mikey Doble. After the safety car, he tried a move on Adam Morgan’s fifth-placed Plato Racing Mercedes A35 Saloon into the Hislop’s chicane, only for contact to send Sutton onto the grass again – and back behind the Audis.
Morgan succumbed to a technical problem at half-distance, and Moffat finally put some distance between himself and the rest to take fifth. Sutton’s penultimate-lap bid to grab sixth off Doble succeeded only in allowing Tom Chilton’s Excelr8 Hyundai into the mix, and Doble took the place from Sutton and Chilton.
At the bottom of the top 10, Chris Smiley managed to surge his Restart Racing Hyundai past Daryl De Leon’s West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport for ninth as they surged to the line.
Best of those to take hard tyres in race one was Ricky Collard’s Excelr8 Hyundai, 14th ahead of fellow hard users Charles Rainford and Dan Rowbottom.
BTCC Oulton Park – Race 1 results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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