Josh Cook triumphed in the final race of the British Touring Car Championship season at Brands Hatch after starting the day from the back of the grid.
Cook was sidelined from the first phase of qualifying with an oil pressure problem, but fought his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport into contention through the first two races, and was rewarded with a front-row spot on the reversed grid.
Like poleman Aiden Moffat and third-on-the-grid Jake Hill, Cook had saved his soft tyres for use in the final, but he could not prevent the rear-wheel-drive West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sports getting the better of him at the start, with Moffat leading Hill.
A spectacular launch over the kerbs at Paddock Hill Bend on the second lap allowed Cook the momentum to squeeze up the inside of Hill to grab second place at Druids, and Ash Sutton shouldered past the outgoing champion for third at Surtees.
Cook had just speared down the inside of Moffat at Surtees to grab the lead on lap four when the safety car emerged, after clash between the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus STs of Dan Cammish and Dan Rowbottom on the hill up to Druids that saw Cammish out of the race.
Sutton, also with soft tyres on his Alliance Ford, wasted no time in passing Moffat at Druids when the restart came, and with 11 laps remaining the chase of Cook was on.
Although the Toyota did not quite have the pace of the chasing Ford when everything was equal, Cook did have a surfeit of TOCA Turbo Boost.
Sutton set fastest lap on the TTB after passing Moffat, but Cook was able to keep the gap at around a second and took the chequered flag 1.043s to the good.
Ashley Sutton, NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus ST
Photo by: JEP
“It’s the best way to end the season, isn’t it?” said Cook. “We’ve had a lot of pace in the car all weekend, and obviously yesterday didn’t go to plan.
“We knew that we could fight back during the day, and that there was a possibility that the win could happen.
“We [Cook and Sutton] were actually texting about it in the week that maybe we would end up in a fight, and we did. I wanted to keep away from him because I could see that he had strong pace. I just hung on for dear life and tried to keep my gap.”
Hill had been closing on the leading duo but ran out of laps to make a challenge on his farewell race in the BTCC.
Moffat conceded another position on the penultimate lap, to the medium-tyred Speedworks Toyota of Gordon Shedden, who completed a great race for the Cheshire squad.
Moffat only just held off the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback of newly crowned champion Tom Ingram for fifth, with Ingram’s team-mate Adam Morgan right behind.
Rowbottom finished eighth ahead of Senna Proctor (Excelr8 Hyundai) and Sam Osborne (Alliance Ford), but the bearded Midlander was later excluded from the results for the incident with Cammish, elevating Dexter Patterson’s Un-Limited Motorsport Cupra to the top 10.
Patterson led his Independent rivals Dan Lloyd and Chris Smiley (Restart Racing Hyundais) and Mikey Doble (Power Maxed Racing Cupra), this trio all embroiled in a nervy fight for the Indie crown.
Smiley ran second, while Doble appeared to be backing Lloyd into a position where he came under threat from Nic Hamilton. This succeeded late on when Lloyd was demoted by Hamilton, enjoying probably his best race ever in the BTCC, although fifth place in class was still enough for the relieved Yorkshireman to snatch it by four points from Doble, with Smiley only one point further behind.
Meanwhile, Daryl DeLeon triumphed in a similarly tense struggle for the Jack Sears Trophy title over West Surrey Racing BMW team-mate Charles Rainford. The gap was three points in the Anglo-Filipino’s favour after a battle in the wake of JST rivals Osborne and Patterson.
BTCC Brands Hatch – Race 3 results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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