Cook, Sutton and Doble split Croft BTCC wins

Josh Cook, Ash Sutton, and Mikey Doble were the winners at the British Touring Car Championship took to Croft Circuit in North Yorkshire for a trio of championship rounds.

The first race of the day took place in wet conditions with Speedworks Corolla Racing driver Cook (pictured above) starting from pole and pulling away from the NAPA Racing UK pair of Dan Cammish and Sutton early on by making use of a better allocation of TOCA Turbo Boost (TTB) to streak clear.

Behind the lead trio, Team Vertu’s Tom Ingram, after starting from fifth, didn't take long to become part of the lead equation, with fourth-place starter Daryl DeLeon slipping back, and after applying the pressure on Sutton, finally got past when the championship leader ran wide at Sunny on lap 12.

Ingram then got by Cammish, but was hit with a penalty for exceeding track limits. Nevertheless, he continued his push to snatch the lead off Cook at the final hairpin with two laps to go.

Ingram went on to win on the road, but with his penalty he was classified third behind Cook and Sutton, who recovered from his slip-up to pass Cammish late on.

Cammish was fourth, with Ricky Collard fifth for Team Vertu, DeLeon ending up sixth, with his WSR teammate Charles Rainford, LKQ Euro Car Parts with Power Maxed Racing’s Aiden Moffat, CPRL’s Dan Rowbottom, and Doble in another Power Maxed Audi completing the top-10.

“[I had a] good start, got away, settled in,” said Cook. “[I] had to be the exploratory person, finding out what the circuit was like, and it was OK.

“Midway through the race, I came across a backmarker, I had to take it really easy, lost a bit of a gap, and then heard that they'd all picked up a track limits penalty behind. So at that point, I knew I just needed to be sensible. If they caught me and overtook me, it wasn't a problem, as long as I could keep that little gap of five seconds, and I'd have been fine.”

RACE 1 RESULTS

The top three finishers from Race 1 have to start on the hard tire for Race 2 – with the rain of the first race of the day making way for drier but still greasy conditions – and that tends to leave them at a performance disadvantage, but Sutton didn't get the memo as he dominated to claim his 55th career victory and eighth of the season.

He took the lead on the first lap by swooping round the outside of Cook at Tower and from there he never looked back. Cook held station in second, allowing Sutton to build a gap, but he was eventually passed on lap 4 by Ingram.

That didn't last long though, with Rowbottom and Collard both on soft tires finding a way past, then in a duel with Cammish, contact sent him into the wall at Sunny and out of the race.

Rowbottom finished a distant second to Sutton – six seconds back – with Collard taking his seventh podium of the season in third. Cammish took fourth once again, ahead of Rainford, Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport’s Gordon Shedden, Restart Racing’s Daniel Lloyd, Team Vertu’s Tom Chilton, Moffat and Doble.

“We had a steady start,” said Sutton. “It wasn't one of our blinding starts, we were on a damp part of the track and couldn't really get the traction down. But sort of settled in behind Josh, was happy to kind of just sit there, and then he had a little wobble through the Esses and kind of teed me up to have a bit of a run. He then kind of went to the middle of the circuit down into Tower, and I thought, ‘Oh, I'm going to around the outside. I got to try and do something.’

“Then the moment we came over the start line, my engineer, came over the radio and said, ‘Right, I need some qualifying laps’ and that was the only call I got from him. So literally head down and just went for it.”

RACE 2 RESULTS

The partial reverse grid draw for Race 3 – conducted by 2002 and '04 BTCC champion James Thompson – put Doble on pole alongside his teammate Moffat, with Chilton, Lloyd, and Shedden behind them.

In a messy final race of the day, Doble and Moffat got away from the grid well to fly in formation into Turn 1. Behind them though Collard got into the side of Cammish on the approach to Turn 1. That forced Cammish to hop the curb at the turn which sent him back into Collard who spun and collected Sutton, who in turn hit Rowbottom. Amid the drama NAPA Racing UK driver Lewis Selby made contact with MB Motorsport’s Aron Taylor-Smith who, like Collard, went out of the race on the spot, necessitating a safety car.

For Collard it was a dismal end to his BTCC season, as he is set to be replaced by Japanese driver Osamu Kawashima for the final two events of the year at Silverstone and Brands Hatch.

When the race resumed, Doble pulled away as Moffat kept the pack behind them at bay but on lap 8 Chilton tapped Moffat at Sunny while locking up, but made the move stick with Shedden also sneaking through.

Moffat then fell into the clutches of Ingram who, after starting 23rd and last as a result of his Race 2 retirement, was back in the top-five conversation along with Rainford. Ingram's race came to an abrupt end when a dip of his wheels onto the grass on the exit of Tower sent him spinning out of the race.

Of little consolation to Ingram was that championship rival and runaway points leader Sutton – after a lengthy pit stop after the lap 1 crash and a brief re-emergence to snag fastest lap and the point that comes with it – also retired.

Chilton and Shedden completed the podium behind Doble, with Cook taking fourth off Morgan after the CPRL driver was handed a penalty for track limits violations. He wasn’t the only driver to meet such a fate, with Restart Racing’s Chris Smiley, his teammate Lloyd, Steel Seal with Power Maxed Racing driver Dexter Patterson, Rowbottom, and DeLeon in 11th all being hit with penalties.

That meant that, behind Morgan, Moffat eventually settled for sixth, ahead of Smiley and Lloyd, with Patterson and Rowbottom completing the top 10. Speedworks Corolla Racing’s Ryan Bensley was shuffled to 11th postrace to give him his best BTCC result to-date.

Doble’s win was his second of the season after he inherited the round 1 win at Donington Park, and fulfilled a pre-season target he set himself to win multiple races this season.

“What a way to finish the weekend,” he said. “It's been a long time coming. I said at the start of the year that I wanted to be a multiple race winner this year.

“I won the first round of the year, I thought maybe the task was going to be made a bit easier, but we've waited until round eight now to get that result. So [I] couldn't be more proud of the operation, the team, and everyone at LKQ Euro Car Parts with Power Maxed Racing.

RACE 3 RESULTS

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