Neal wins Donington opener

The poleman got too much wheelspin in his Honda Racing Civic at the start and lost the lead to the fast-starting Triple 8 Engineering Vauxhall Vectra of James Nash. But Neal tracked Nash and dived past on the inside into Redgate at the start of lap two to take a lead he was not to lose.

Neal's team-mate Gordon Shedden then moved forward to challenge Nash, but got delayed at the Old Hairpin, allowing Andrew Jordan's Eurotech Racing Vectra to outdrag the Honda on the way to McLeans.

Jordan quickly overcame Nash at Redgate and set off after Neal. He closed in the late stages, but the Honda held on to win by less than 0.4 seconds.

Arena Motorsport's Tom Chilton initially held on to the lead group, but gradually fell back. He nevertheless took a comfortable fifth, behind Shedden and Nash, well clear of the older Ford Focus of Mat Jackson (Motorbase Performance).

Rob Collard took a fine seventh in his WSR BMW, after holding off a determined attack from Tom Boardman's Special Tuning Racing SEAT Leon for much of the race.

A first corner moment, which also delayed several others, meant Eurotech's Jeff Smith had a lot of work to do. He came back to 12th, narrowly missing out on defeating Alex MacDowall's RML-run Chevrolet Cruze.

Jason Plato, championship leader coming into the race, ran sixth for the first half of the race, but ended up point-less after his Cruze suffered a left-front puncture.

Results - 16 laps:

Pos  Driver           Team/Car                 Time/Gap
 1.  Matt Neal        Honda                  19m13.620s
 2.  Andrew Jordan    Eurotech Vauxhall        + 0.359s
 3.  Gordon Shedden   Honda                    + 1.263s
 4.  James Nash       Triple 8 Vauxhall        + 2.024s
 5.  Tom Chilton      Arena Ford               + 4.532s
 6.  Mat Jackson      Motorbase Ford          + 10.943s
 7.  Rob Collard      WSR BMW                 + 14.658s
 8.  Tom Boardman     Special Tuning SEAT     + 15.094s
 9.  Paul O'Neill     Tech-Speed Chevrolet    + 18.433s
10.  Alex MacDowall   Chevrolet               + 19.110s
11.  Jeff Smith       Eurotech Vauxhall       + 19.550s
12.  Tom Onslow-Cole  AmD Volkswagen          + 25.084s
13.  Nick Foster      WSR BMW                 + 25.562s
14.  Liam Griffin     Motorbase Ford          + 29.907s
15.  Andy Neate       Arena Ford              + 30.569s
16.  Tony Gilham      Triple 8 Vauxhall       + 30.658s
17.  Frank Wrathall   Dynojet Toyota          + 38.660s
18.  Chris James      ES Chevrolet          + 1m02.953s
19.  Jason Plato      Chevrolet                + 2 laps
20.  Tony Hughes      Speedworks Toyota        + 2 laps

Retirements:

     John George      Tech-Speed Chevrolet       2 laps
     Dave Newsham     Geoff Steel BMW            0 laps
     Rob Austin       Austin Audi                0 laps