Thruxton BTCC: Third win of the season for Honda driver Josh Cook
Josh Cook bagged his third win of the British Touring Car Championship season in the second race at Thruxton as polesitter Sam Tordoff fell to 10th with a radiator issue
BTC Racing driver Cook - a winner at Thruxton earlier in the season - started fourth but capitalised on Adam Morgan's conservative attempt to pass Tordoff into the final chicane to pull away and lead by almost two seconds at the flag.
Tordoff looked strong in the initial phase of the race, acing his launch while Dan Cammish - who started second - bogged down heavily to drop to seventh.
That allowed third-on-the-grid Morgan and Cook to gain a place at the off, with Tordoff breaking away by several car lengths despite carrying the maximum 54kg of success ballast for his race one win.
Tordoff held a 0.874s lead at the end of the opening lap, but Morgan carved 0.6s out on the next tour thanks to a huge tow down the back straight.
With the FK8 Honda Civic Type R of Cook even faster over the lap, just six tenths covered the top three.
Morgan and Cook ran side-by-side on the approach to the Club chicane as they attempted to mount a simultaneous attack on Tordoff, but fell back into their positions to start the following lap.
On the next tour Tordoff suffered a high-speed slide on the exit of Church and so lost momentum on the run to the chicane.
Morgan and Cook enjoyed the straight line advantage and ran three abreast into the braking zone.
Round 20 - Josh Cook takes the lead.
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Tordoff, struggling with the heavy ballast, was demoted two spots as a more incisive Cook beat Morgan to the race lead.
Cook was carrying 6kg less success ballast than Morgan and so was able to build a gap at around 0.4s a lap, running on to his fourth BTCC victory by 1.973s.
Morgan's much improved form kept him a comfortable second as Tordoff faded heavily late on due to a punctured radiator and overheating.
His defensive work meant he had held on to the final podium spot, while his lack of ultimate pace allowed Cook and Morgan to escape.
But as Tom Oliphant dived up the inside of the AmD Tuning car, it forced Tordoff off line. That killed his speed and allowed all of Rob Collard, a recovering Cammish, Matt Neal and Andrew Jordan through.
Neal's strong straight-line performance gave him a last-lap run at the BMW 330i M Sport of Oliphant and he carried his speed on the outside line at the chicane to run on to the final podium spot by just 0.08s.
Cammish limited the damaged from his bad start by netting fifth ahead of Collard, who was drawn on pole for the partially-reversed final race.
Jordan chipped away at team-mate Colin Turkington's points advantage with seventh, as the two WSR drivers were split by Tom Ingram.
Tordoff hung on for a top 10 position ahead of Ashley Sutton, Tom Chilton and Jason Plato - who was recovering from a penalty for starting out of position from second on the grid in race one, where he finished 17th.
Race two result
Pos | Driver | Team | Car | Laps | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Josh Cook | BTC Racing | Honda | 16 | 20m55.108s |
2 | Adam Morgan | Ciceley Motorsport | Mercedes | 16 | 1.973s |
3 | Matt Neal | Team Dynamics | Honda | 16 | 8.360s |
4 | Tom Oliphant | WSR | BMW | 16 | 8.440s |
5 | Dan Cammish | Team Dynamics | Honda | 16 | 9.022s |
6 | Rob Collard | Power Maxed Racing | Vauxhall | 16 | 9.608s |
7 | Andrew Jordan | WSR | BMW | 16 | 10.082s |
8 | Tom Ingram | Speedworks Motorsport | Toyota | 16 | 10.666s |
9 | Colin Turkington | WSR | BMW | 16 | 10.823s |
10 | Sam Tordoff | AmD Tuning | Honda | 16 | 13.823s |
11 | Ash Sutton | BMR Racing | Subaru | 16 | 13.917s |
12 | Tom Chilton | Motorbase Performance | Ford | 16 | 14.388s |
13 | Jason Plato | Power Maxed Racing | Vauxhall | 16 | 15.272s |
14 | Rory Butcher | AmD Tuning | Honda | 16 | 15.782s |
15 | Jake Hill | Trade Price Cars Racing | Audi | 16 | 15.935s |
16 | Stephen Jelley | Team Parker Racing | BMW | 16 | 19.060s |
17 | Matt Simpson | Simpson Racing | Honda | 16 | 19.871s |
18 | Ollie Jackson | Motorbase Performance | Ford | 16 | 20.370s |
19 | Jack Goff | Team Hard | Volkswagen | 16 | 22.848s |
20 | Daniel Rowbottom | Ciceley Motorsport | Mercedes | 16 | 23.483s |
21 | Chris Smiley | BTC Racing | Honda | 16 | 23.732s |
22 | Bobby Thompson | Team Hard | Volkswagen | 16 | 28.647s |
23 | Rob Smith | Excelr8 Motorsport | MG | 16 | 31.178s |
24 | Aiden Moffat | Laser Tools Racing | Infiniti | 16 | 32.127s |
25 | Michael Crees | Team Hard | Volkswagen | 16 | 35.956s |
26 | Mark Blundell | Trade Price Cars Racing | Audi | 16 | 38.793s |
27 | Nicolas Hamilton | Motorbase Performance | Ford | 16 | 40.558s |
28 | Sam Osborne | Excelr8 Motorsport | MG | 16 | 43.805s |
29 | Senna Proctor | BMR Racing | Subaru | 16 | 52.412s |
- | Carl Boardley | Team Hard | Volkswagen | 15 | Retirement |
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