BTCC Donington Park: Cammish wins again to take early points lead

The Yorkshireman made the most of being gifted the reversed-grid pole position, and led from lights to flag in wet conditions at the wheel of his Motorbase Performance Ford Focus ST.

It wasn’t easy for him early on – Tom Ingram speared down the inside of Colin Turkington into the Old Hairpin on the opening lap and, once an early safety-car period had ended, he applied pressure to Cammish.

There was another safety car shortly afterwards, but within a couple of laps Cammish was able to eke out a small gap to Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N.

With nine laps remaining the margin was over one second, and Cammish took the chequered flag 3.044 seconds to the good.

“Fantastic,” said Cammish. “After qualifying I thought things might come back to me in the races, and they did. The car performed brilliantly.

“Qualifying needs a little bit of tweaking, but I knew we’d be a rocketship on Sunday – and we were.”

Start action, Dan Cammish, NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus ST leads

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Life was far from easy for Ingram, who felt that his car was lacking the pace it enjoyed earlier.

At first he had to defend from Turkington, and as this duo battled so Ash Sutton and Jake Hill – from 15th and 16th respectively on the grid – began to close in, and with a few laps remaining the quartet was together.

Sutton’s Motorbase Ford dived into a chink of light inside Turkington’s West Surrey Racing-run BMW 330e M Sport at McLeans on the 19th lap of 21.

Turkington tried to cling on and they ran abreast through Coppice, but the end result was team-mate Jake Hill managing to claim the inside line and fourth place at the chicane.

Sutton went on the attack on Ingram – a last-ditch lunge into the chicane on the final lap resulted in contact that sent Ingram across the gravel trap, although the reigning champion reached the finish line in second place, while Sutton just pipped Hill.

Dan Rowbottom ran in fifth place early on in his Motorbase Ford, but his bid to pass Bobby Thompson’s Team Hard Cupra Leon ended in disaster when Thompson attempted to fight back at McLeans, and contact sent Rowbottom skating through the gravel.

Thompson finished a distant sixth, with Stephen Jelley (WSR BMW) next up from Tom Chilton (Excelr8 Hyundai), Josh Cook (One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R) and the recovering Rowbottom.

The first safety car was triggered when Nick Halstead’s Hyundai needed retrieving from the gravel at Redgate, and the second by the end result of an incident at the restart.

Contact at the chicane between the WSR BMW of Adam Morgan and Motorbase Ford of Sam Osborne sent Morgan spinning to the back, while Osborne parked with damaged suspension on the approach to Redgate.

BTCC Donington Park - Race 3 results (21 laps)

Cla	Driver	Gap	Interval
1	Dan Cammish
2	Tom Ingram	3.044	3.044
3	Ashley Sutton	3.771	0.727
4	Jake Hill	3.884	0.113
5	Colin Turkington	4.683	0.799
6	Bobby Thompson	12.615	7.932
7	Josh Cook	14.883	2.268
8	Tom Chilton	15.964	1.081
9	Aron Taylor-Smith	16.192	0.228
10	Daniel Rowbottom	17.196	1.004
11	Rory Butcher	17.309	0.113
12	Andrew Watson	18.080	0.771
13	George Gamble	20.757	2.677
14	Ricky Collard	24.005	3.248
15	Aiden Moffat	25.906	1.901
16	Dexter Patterson	26.183	0.277
17	Jack Butel	26.473	0.290
18	Daniel Lloyd	28.684	2.211
19	Ronan Pearson	29.396	0.712
20	Stephen Jelley	34.562	5.166
21	Nicolas Hamilton	48.236	13.674
22	Adam Morgan	1 Lap	1 Lap
	Mikey Doble	5 Laps	4 Laps
	Jade Edwards	6 Laps	1 Lap
	Will Powell	15 Laps	9 Laps
	Sam Osborne	17 Laps	2 Laps
	Nick Halstead
View full results