Tom Ingram swept to victory in the final British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Thruxton to put a small dent into Ash Sutton’s points advantage.
Sutton’s second place completed a great day for the four-time champion, especially since it came from sixth on the reversed grid.
Ingram, like Sutton in race two, has his start under investigation, but his winning margin of 5.663 seconds could be enough should the reigning champion be found to be guilty, since the penalty is normally 5s.
James Dorlin was on pole in his Restart Racing Hyundai i30 N Fastback, with Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai alongside. There was a slight bump between the two as they raced side by side out of Allard, before Ingram claimed the advantage into the Complex.
The race soon went under the safety car. Contact from Adam Morgan at the middle apex of the chicane sent Josh Cook onto a collision course with Speedworks Motorsport Toyota team-mate Aron Taylor-Smith.
Another Speedworks Toyota, that of Ryan Bensley, then ground to a halt on its way out of the pitlane with deranged left-front, causing an exceptionally long period of recovery.
Josh Cook, Speedworks Corolla Racing Toyota Corolla GR Sport
Photo by: JEP
There was time for 11 more laps of racing and, on the first of those, Sutton’s Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium got the run on Dorlin out of Church Corner to move up to second place.
Sutton was now 1.563s behind Ingram and, with just one lap of TOCA Turbo Boost to the five of his big rival, it was unlikely that the Hyundai would be beaten.
Sure enough, Ingram came home comfortably ahead of Sutton, while another Alliance Ford, that of Dan Cammish, was third.
Cammish was out of TTB on the final lap and Ricky Collard, recovering all day after alternator failure nixed his Excelr8 Hyundai in the qualifying race, used his final lap of boost to finish right on his tail.
Senna Proctor, on his one-off outing with the Alliance Ford team, was the other to get past Dorlin on his way to fifth.
Behind sixth-placed Dorlin, Dan Rowbottom fought a sketchy looking Plato Racing Mercedes and eventually concede seventh to Gordon Shedden’s Speedworks Toyota. Tom Chilton (Excelr8 Hyundai) and Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon pair Dexter Patterson and Mikey Doble also got past the bearded Midlander to complete the top 10.
BTCC Thruxton – Race 3 results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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