Cammish, Sutton and Rainford score BTCC wins at Oulton Park

Dan Cammish, Ash Sutton, and Charles Rainford shared the spoils as the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship headed to Oulton Park in the northwest of England. The races were the last before a seven-week break intended to avoid a clash with the soccer World Cup which begins next week.

NAPA Racing UK driver Cammish (pictured above) controlled the field from pole in the opening race of the day to take his first win of the season – and his first at Oulton Park, leaving just Knockhill as the only track on the schedule he hasn't won at in the BTCC.

He made a good getaway while Josh Cook, Sutton, and Tom Ingram all battled behind him. Starting third on the grid, Sutton made a great start to get into second by the first turn, but contact with Cook through Cascades sent him sliding.

Cook went on to apply early pressure on Cammish, having more TOCA Turbo Boost (TTB) available, but his challenge was hampered on the third lap when the safety car was deployed after Lewis Selby went into the wall on the run to Lodge corner. On the restart, Cammish dropped the hammer.

His lead was helped further by Speedwords Corolla Racing driver Cook having to fend off Ingram, and while he was able to use his greater TTB allowance to eventually break free of the Team VERTU driver, he wasn't able to overhaul Cammish.

Aron Taylor-Smith made up one place from his penalty-affected fifth-place start to finish fourth, with the Power Maxed Racing Audis of Aiden Moffat and Mikey Doble in fifth and sixth.

Sutton survived a bruising race to finish seventh. After dropping down the order on the first lap, he set about fighting back but ended up on the grass again at Hislops as he attempted to clear Adam Morgan's Cataclean Plato Racing Mercedes.

With Morgan retiring with a technical issue, Sutton repassed Doble – having initially got past both Doble and Moffat – but a penultimate lap push for sixth on Doble proved unsuccessful. Tom Chilton was eighth, with Chris Smiley and Daryl De Leon completing the top-10.

RACE 1 RESULTS

With the top three finishers from Race 1 forced to start Race 2 on the hard Goodyear tires, the stage was set for another Sutton charge as he started on the softs.

Sutton already advanced from seventh to fourth on the first lap of the race, then moved into the podium places on the second lap when Taylor-Smith's move on Ingram for second at the Island hairpin opened the door.

Sutton then disposed of Ingram at Old Hall on the third lap, before his hard tire-shod teammate Cammish didn't put up much of a fight at Lodge, allowing Sutton to move into the lead.

From there he was untouchable and crossed the line 19.333s ahead of second-place Ingram – an unthinkable winning margin in what is typically a tight and competitive series, and one that wasn't impacted by rain arriving on the penultimate lap.

“Ultimately we had a very good car,” Sutton told RACER. “Obviously we were racing people on hard tire, because no one else got past Dan [Cammish] or Tom [Ingram], so we were just in a very good position, we had a load of [boost] deployments, soft tire, that combination alone can be a couple of seconds a lap over a hard tire and no boost.

“We got to a sensible point with gap and Tony [Carrozza}, my engineer said, ‘Look, the bad weather is coming at the end of the race, just stretch out as much as you can, just to cover yourself if there's a going off or anything,’ so we were just giving ourselves a huge buffer, if we can.

“The last thing you want to do is spin off, or have a moment, or go off, and you cost yourself a lead. So we just gave ourselves a decent buffer.”

Ingram's second place came after a tense dice with Cammish found his way by on lap 13 at Lodge. That left Cammish settling for third, ahead of De Leon who prevailed in a tight multi-car battle, ahead of Doble, Gordon Shedden, and Taylor-Smith who fell from fourth late on.

Ricky Collard was eighth after a lap 14 pass on Dexter Patterson, with Rainford taking 10th.

RACE 2 RESULTS

For the third race of the day, 11th place from Race 2 was drawn for the partial reverse grid, initially handing pole to Sam Osborne ahead of Rainford, but Taylor-Smith received a penalty for causing a collision with Tom Chilton in Race 2, sending him back to 18th on the grid. That elevated Chris Smiley to 11th and the pole alongside Osborne, with Rainford third and Patterson fourth.

Collard occupied the third row of the grid alongside Shedden, ahead of Doble and de Leon, Cammish and Ingram, and Sutton the last of those reversed down in 11th.

Smiley held firm out in front initially despite Rainford’s best efforts, but following an early safety car after a sliding Taylor-Smith collected Adam Morgan on the exit of Old Hall on the first lap, Rainford got by round the outside at Cascades.

Smiley then fell victim to Collard at Lodge, putting the only two drivers front he top-five starters on the soft tires out in front. Smiley’s chances of a strong result disappeared completely after Ingram and Cammish soon passed – after the Team VERTU driver had already got past the Race 1 winner with a daring move up the inside at Old Hall.

Rainford was keeping a persistent Collard at bay out in front but the race came under safety car conditions once again on lap 7 when Chilton collided with Lewis Selby after his car got unsettled on the curb on the entry to Cascades.

When the race resumed with 13 laps of the extended 18 to go, Collard once again applied the pressure on Rainford, flashing his lights relentlessly in a bid to hinder the WSR man, but it was to no avail as Rainford took the win by 1.319s.

“This year we have a qualifying race – that was my qualifying race,” Rainford told RACER. “I've never driven a race as fast as that. I was pushing absolutely 10 tenths the whole time.

“We still need to work on our car a little bit. It's not quite in the window that I wanted to be, but I’m just super, super happy to bring that win home because I was quite nervous beforehand.”

When Rainford won at Snetterton last time out, he credited the hot and sunny conditions for helping his BMW 33i M Sport, but with cooler temperatures, grey skies and a light sprinkling of rain on and off throughout the day, he was able to prevail in unfancied conditions.

“It’s a mega car. We really nailed it that time,” he said referring to the Snetterton victory. “We wanted to make a few changes after race two, we were going to use the soft tire for the first time today… OK, don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect, but it was a fast car, and that's what allowed me to take that win today.”

Ingram and Cammish weren’t far behind in third and fourth respectively, while Cook had a solid run to fifth.

Rowbottom was sixth, with Smiley ending up seventh. Dexter Patterson, Sutton – hammered by the hard tire in the final race of the day – and Moffat completed the top-10.

RACE 3 RESULTS

After the three races at Oulton Park, Sutton still leads the championship but his advantage over Ingram has been cut from 57 points to 48 heading into an extended break for the soccer World Cup before the season resumes at Thruxton on July 25-26.

Ingram endured a difficult start to the year with a disqualification and retirement at Donington, but he’s now finding consistency, shown with his three podium finishes this weekend.

“It's all we can really do, is to have weekends like this whilst Ash [Sutton] is a little further down the pack,” he told RACER. “We've done all we could do this weekend, I don't think we could have got much more out of it.

“We still need to find some more time, so a few other bits and pieces, but I should hopefully come back fighting after the summer break.”

Despite Ingram’s solid weekend, Sutton’s still the man to beat in the series. He’s going into the seven week layoff in a relaxed mood.

“I think we just go away, we focus on what we're doing, won't change too much,” he said. “I'll probably dive head-first into my sim company and focus a bit more on that. But yeah, just spend a bit of time focusing on the tiny little bits we want to improve on for the last part of the year.”

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