Colin Turkington led a first ever Subaru one-two just in front of Jason Plato in a race interrupted by several safety car periods.
Front row starter Daniel Lloyd was the cause of the first one as he clashed with Colin Turkington going into the first corner. Turkington was on the inside line and as Lloyd tried to turn into the corner he found the front of Turkington’s Subaru Levorg which spun Lloyds Eurotech Civic straight into the turn one gravel.
“That’s the highs and lows of motorsport,” said Lloyd afterwards. “I’m kicking myself as I wasn’t expecting to get off the line so well. It was the best start I’ve ever had but it forced to take the outside line. It’s horrible out there as you have two options; go for it and stay wide and then let everyone fly past down your inside. In hindsight I should have taken the latter choice. It was just one of those things.”
Tordoff also ran wide on the first lap dropping himself down the order. Powermaxed’s Hunter Abbott was unfortunately another casualty on the first lap as he ran wide and hit Adam Morgan’s Wix Mercedes. The impact put Abbott out but Morgan continued for now.
Mark Howard then threw his BKR VW CC off at the first corner a few laps later, the incident bringing out the safety car again meaning the Subaru’s were never able to pull out much of a lead.
The third and final safety car was caused when Gordon Shedden ran wide at the first corner and rejoined into the path of Aiden Moffat’s Laser Tools racing Mercedes. The impact knocked a wheel off the Mercedes leaving it stranded.
Both Mercedes were in the wars as Adam Morgan had a second collision later in the race, this time with Mat Jackson’s Motorbase Focus. That impact put an end to Morgan’s race but Jackson was able to continue.
Turkington was able to keep ahead of team mate Plato on every restart and both of them stayed comfortably ahead of the third place battle which by that point was being won by Ashley Sutton with Jack Goff right on his tail.
Turkington spoke after the race;
“They certainly didn’t make that one easy for me, it was the kind of race where you need to remain one hundred percent focused right to the end. To have three safety car periods is quite unusual, and with the tyre pressures dropping at the lower speeds, I had to carefully manage all the re-starts which was tricky. With Jason not far behind either, there was absolutely no margin for error, but the team gave us both a fantastic car so massive credit to them all. The Subaru Levorg package is getting stronger and we’re not a million miles away with it now. Of course, I’ll have an extra 75kg on-board in race two – which is effectively another me plus all my shopping – so that will obviously take some speed off, but the chassis is working really well so we should still be in good shape.”
With Turkington and Plato comfortably taking the win, Ashley Sutton held off Jack Goff to take his first ever BTCC overall podium.
“That’s a great result,” said a very happy Sutton. “It was really hard out there. I was expecting to get squeezed out at turn one, but we hung on and I knew the Subarus would be off into the distance. It was then all about keeping Jack behind me while looking after the car and tyres – I am delighted and it’s a great result for the team.”
Tordoff had fought his way back up the order but an oil leak caused to drop back down the field.
With Jack Goff in fourth, the first of the independent drivers home was Andrew Jordan in fifth in his Pirtek Focus. Jake Hill took his best result of the season with sixth, an impressive drive to get past a big chunk of the field.
Rob Collard was another driver to fight his way up the field going from thirteenth on the grid up to seventh place just ahead of Mat Jackson who had run-ins with several cars during the race.
Speedworks Tom Ingram and BKR’s Aron Smith completed the top ten. Rob Austin was eleventh for Handy, after looking like a better result earlier in the race he was shuffled down the order.
Twelfth was Matt Neal, amazingly the best Honda Finisher with Shedden only taking the final point in fifteenth after his run in with Moffat.
Tordoff eventually took thirteenth to at least score some points with Michael Epps making it a double points scoring race for RCIB Insurance Racing.
Full results are on TSL timing. By Marc Waller
