Matt Neal has won an action packed first race at Knockhill. The race was full of incidents up and down the field.
Sam Tordoff initially led Rob Austin from Pole, before Austin got knocked off dropping down the top ten.
Colin Turkington meanwhile was fighting his way forward from his ninth place grid slot. Once Austin had dropped back, Matt Neal became Tordoff’s nearest challenger with a big group behind including Plato,Austin, Shedden, Jordan, Turkington and Morgan.
One of the main incidents came when Shedden slid sideways coming down Duffus dip and collected Jordan, with Jordan coming off worst with damage to his car forcing him to retire. The other big incident came a few laps later when Turkington, who had just got past Plato, received a nudge from the rear by Plato sending him sideways and then a further nudge sent him spinning into the gravel and out of the race bringing out a safety car. During this time Neal got past Tordoff who then slowed with car problems. He continued but finished down in twenty fourth.
So it was now Neal, from Austin who had fought his way back to the front, getting past Shedden during the collision with Jordan. Shedden hung on in third and Mat Jackson, who had avoided all the trouble took an excellent fourth.
Fifth was Plato but he is likely to be the subject of a protest by Ebay Motors for his move on Turkington. Adam Morgan was a competitive sixth always running with the pack towards the front. Tom Ingram was a strong seventh in front of Aron Smith in eighth recovering from a disappointing qualifying. Ninth was AMD Tuning’s Dave Newsham, having his strongest race for a while and Nick Foster completed the top ten in the process managing to be the top Ebay Motors driver with team mates Collard and Turkington taking twelfth and a dnf respectively. Alain Menu narrowly missed out on a top ten after looking strong.
Hunter Abbott who started eleventh didn’t have the luck of team mate Austin and a series of nudges plus a technical issue put him to the rear of the field with his car stoping completely on the final lap. Giovanardi, Goff and Scott completed the points finishers.
Full results on TSL By Marc Waller
