Rowbottom beats Chilton in second race

Dan Rowbottom capitalised on his soft-compound Goodyear tyres to take victory in the second British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Croft.

With the top three from race one all mandated to use the hard rubber, Rowbottom and Tom Chilton – fourth and fifth respectively in the opener – always looked the favourites for this one.

Conversely, it would be a case of damage limitation for first-race winner Tom Ingram, whose eventual eighth-place finish means he still retains his new points lead, albeit trimmed slightly, over Ash Sutton, who burst through from the back of the grid to fifth.

Rowbottom’s progress took his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST past Senna Proctor at Tower on the opening lap for third, and then he went down the inside of team-mate Dan Cammish into the complex next time around.

An identikit complex manoeuvre on Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback elevated Rowbottom into the lead on lap three.

Ingram left plenty of room for team-mate Chilton to follow through into second place at the hairpin but, the Surrey man being the extrovert that he is, he launched his Hyundai over the kerb and spectacularly up onto two wheels in the process of slipping past.

Although Chilton hovered around in Rowbottom’s mirrors for most of the rest of the race, he was never close enough to look in serious contention for a pass, and the bearded Midlander came home 1.883 seconds in front.

“It was good,” said Rowbottom. “Me and Tom had a little connection at Turn 1 [at the start] but that’s standard round here, right?

“The soft tyre didn’t turn on as quickly as I wanted, and I spent a lap behind ‘Cammo’, but we got through and then it was just about trying to maintain the gap [to Chilton].

“I knew Tom had a lap more turbo boost than me, but once we were level I thought we would be OK.

“But I had a vibration on the left front from lap five. It was really bad on the last lap but it just got me home. The last three laps, when we were using boost, I thought, ‘This tyre has just got to hang on.’”

Behind Chilton, Daryl DeLeon wasn’t too far adrift in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport, and the Anglo-Filipino youngster took a strong third place – his first podium since his win at Brands Hatch in the second round.

Tom Chilton, Team Vertu Hyundai i30N

Photo by: JEP

Adam Morgan was a similarly comfortable fourth in his Excelr8 Hyundai, ahead of Sutton.

The four-time champion, from 20th on the grid, had already made it up to fifth place by the 10th of the 15 laps when he passed Charles Rainford’s WSR BMW at Hawthorn’s.

But rather than make any further progress, Sutton’s pace seemed to stall and, by the end of the race, Rainford was right back on his tail, the two separated by just 0.220s at the finish.

Just behind Rainford, Gordon Shedden was the best-placed of the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport quartet in seventh, although he was running just behind team-mate Aron Taylor-Smith when the Irishman suffered a front-left puncture and went straight on at the complex to make light contact with the barrier.

Ingram did a solid job to rescue eighth place on the hard tyres and, with ninth-placed Aiden Moffat’s WSR BMW drawn on reversed-grid pole position, that means the championship leader will start the finale from the front row of the grid.

On the wrong side of the reversed-grid draw was Cammish, who slipped to 10th on the hard rubber in his Alliance Ford.

BTCC Croft – Race 2 results