Neal wins first Brands BTCC race

Pole man Neal lost the lead at the start of the race as Motorbase Performance driver Rob Collard catapulted ahead, followed by the similar BMW of WSR driver Colin Turkington.

Collard though, was back in third by lap seven, Turkington and Neal having passed him when he ran wide at Druids.

Neal piled the pressure on Turkington and, after swapping places twice over the next lap and a half, finally made his move stick at Clearways on lap eight, but only after making contact with the BMW on entry to the corner in a move that also dropped Turkington behind the second Vauxhall of Andrew Jordan.

While Neal was able to head off to victory, which was the 100th in the BTCC for the Triple Eight Engineering squad that runs the works Vauxhalls, Jordan would not finish on the podium, his Vectra coming to a halt on lap 18, after he had passed Turkington for second.

Defending champion Fabrizio Giovanardi did reach the top three though, making up for a poor getaway that dropped him to fifth by taking Collard and Turkington in the latter stages and closing up to finish just half a second behind Neal at the chequered flag.

Turkington finished third, ahead of Collard and Adam Jones, who had a magnificent race on the BTCC debut of the Clyde Valley Racing team. Jones, driving a biofuel SEAT Leon, passed Jason Plato's RML Chevrolet during the final third of the race and was the fastest man on the track thereafter.

Plato just held off Stephen Jelley's WSR BMW on the line to take sixth by two thousandths of a second, Jelley having earlier been involved in a start-line incident that eliminated Gordon Shedden's Team Dynamics Honda and Jonathan Adam's Motorbase BMW.

Harry Vaulkhard and Dan Eaves were eighth and ninth for Tempus Chevrolet and Clyde Valley SEAT, while Martyn Bell was a brilliant 10th in the Tech-Speed Honda, taking his first point for over a year.

Pos  Driver               Car         Time
 1.  Matt Neal            Vauxhall    24:37.729
 2.  Fabrizio Giovanardi  Vauxhall     +  0.400
 3.  Colin Turkington     BMW          +  0.895
 4.  Rob Collard          BMW          +  3.300
 5.  Adam Jones           SEAT         +  6.217
 6.  Jason Plato          Chevrolet    + 11.304
 7.  Stephen Jelley       BMW          + 11.306
 8.  Harry Vaulkhard      Chevrolet    + 13.977
 9.  Dan Eaves            SEAT         + 15.103
10.  Martyn Bell          Honda        + 15.381
11.  Tom Chilton          Ford         + 19.627
12.  Martin Johnson       Vauxhall     + 24.779
13.  Alan Morrison        Ford         + 25.758
14.  Liam McMillan        SEAT         + 26.027
15.  David Pinkney        Honda        + 28.636

Retirements:

     Driver               Car        Laps
     Andrew Jordan        Vauxhall   17
     Gordon Shedden       Honda      13
     Nick Leason          BMW        10
     Jonathan Adam        BMW        0
     John George          Honda      0