Sam Tordoff has taken his first BTCC of the year in race two at Oulton Park, denying Subaru the chance of a second win.
Tordoff got the jump on pole sitting Turkington at the start to lead into the first corner and from then on he looked comfortable as he raced to victory. Tordoff is the ninth different winner in eleven races, showing just how competitive this year’s championship is.
Behind Turkington and Plato were fighting for second although Plato never looked to be putting any serious moves on his team mate and towards the closing stages he seemed to settle for third.
Unlike the mostly incident free first race, this time there were several incidents leading to a safety car period. Aron Smith ran wide at Cascades on the first lap but further round at the hairpin there was a bigger incident where Handy Motorsport’s Rob Austin ran his Toyota Avensis into the similar car of Jake Hill. Hill was then fired into Jackson although it was Rob Austin who came off worst, eventually retiring from his damage.
Rob Collard looked set to have a stunning race from twenty third on the grid. He rocketed through the field popping into the top ten after only a few laps.
He then battled with and passed team mate Jack Goff before doing the same to Daniel Lloyd to run eighth. He then got involved with Josh Cook and Matt Neal to fight over sixth place.
With around five laps to go Collard drew alongside the other two on the pit straight but the resulting contact damaged Collard’s car enough that he was forced to retire, although he was classified in twenty fifth, two laps down.
Up ahead with the top three settled, Shedden was in fourth but came under pressure in the later stages from Tom Ingram, who still took the independent win after finishing fifth.
Sixth was Josh Cook after he won the battle between himself Neal and Collard. Neal was seventh in the Halfords Yuasa Honda but this turned out to be the best finishing position with respect to the next race as Neal was drawn on pole.
Andrew Jordan was eighth for Pirtek Racing, so far not looking like repeating his win from Thruxton. Jack Goff was ninth in the IHG Hotels BMW ahead of Mat Jackson who recovered well from the first lap hairpin incident in the Motorbase Ford Focus.
Hunter Abbott continued his good day with another eleventh ahead of Adam Morgan whose weekend in the Wix Mercedes has really suffered after his disasterous qualifying saw him well into the second half of the field.
The final points were taken by the three Eurotech Honda Civic’s; Lloyd from Depper with team boss Smith the last of the trio after an off track incident saw him drop back as he looked to pass Lloyd.
Matt Neal is on pole for race three from Josh Cook. Tom Ingram and Gordon Shedden make up the second row with the Subarus of Plato and Turkington on row three. We look set for an exciting final race of the day.
Full results from this race are available from TSL timing By Marc Waller
