THRILLS AND SPILLS AT SILVERSTONE IN BTCC
Toyota and Team Hard stole headlines, but the title battle is still wide open. By Matt James
The British Touring Car Championship title battle between WSR BMW 330i M Sport teammates Colin Turkington and Andrew Jordan almost took a back seat at Silverstone.
The first two wins went the way of Tom Ingram in the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla, while VW CC racer Jack Goff took a sensational victory in a dry-to-wet race in the final encounter to put Team Hard’s first triumph in the books.
Turkington took a fantastic second place in race two to help cement his advantage going into Brands Hatch’s showdown in 10 days’ time, while
Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R driver Dan Cammish outscored Jordan to keep the pressure on. There is plenty of life left in this battle yet.
Race one
The compact layout of the National circuit means that grid positions are settled by a matter of hundredths of a second. That also means that the big success ballast, while not as much of a hindrance as at some other circuits, does have a significant effect.
WSR and its drivers Tom Oliphant and Turkington worked together to get a tow in qualifying but Turkington felt it had “saved his skin” as he was unhappy with the handling of his car, which he had tried to tweak through the free practice sessions. He would line up in sixth spot with his 54kg of ballast.
His team-mate Jordan, with 48kg, was paired with Stephen Jelley’s Team Parker Racing BMW 125i M Sport for a draft. But when Jelley’s car developed an alternator problem, that scuppered Jordan’s hopes and he was left in a lowly 14th.
Up front, the joy belonged to Jason Plato on a circuit which has traditionally suited the Power Maxed Racing Astra. He was just 0.06s faster than Chris Smiley (BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R FK8), with the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R FK8 of Matt Neal and Ingram sharing row two.
The other major player in the title hunt, Cammish in the Civic Type R, would line up in seventh spot after a strong effort with 42kg aboard.
A shower as the field lined up at the start of the opener had all in a quandary, but slicks was the choice. Silverstone has been relaid with Tarmac since the last BTCC rounds at the Northampton track, and the question was how quickly it would dry. It did, but it took a while.
Plato got a peach of a start to lead from the wheel-spinning Smiley, who was on the wetter side of the track. That benefited Ingram, who leapt up to second spot after a move on Neal at Brooklands on lap one.
The top two set off for a tense battle which would determine the outcome. Plato was pleased with his opening lap and put a 1.1s buffer on Ingram, who was on the medium tyres as opposed to the leader’s softs.
Once there was heat in the Dunlops, Ingram began to reel in his prey. By the fourth lap they were nose to tail.
“There was a small patch of water on the inside at Luffield, and I could see Jason going in tight to the right-hander,” said Ingram. “I switched my line and took a wider entry to see if it would work, and it did.”
Ingram got underneath the Vauxhall and powered alongside through Woodcote as the pair began lap five. After leaning on each other down the pits straight, the Corolla prevailed as they turned into Copse.
Plato knew the game was up. “I just had no answer for Tom, he was faster,” said the double champion. “I was struggling a bit with the grip levels at Luffield and I wonder if that was the difference in the tyre compounds we were running. He did me and that was that. The car wasn’t great all race, so we have work to do.”
Smiley was able to make up for his torrid start to regain a rostrum spot as he overtook Neal, who was struggling with the Dynamics car. He would eventually slip to sixth behind Smiley’s BTC team-mate Josh Cook and Oliphant’s BMW.
Neal said: “We looked at the race before [the Porsche Carrera Cup GB], and we thought the track had dried enough so we took a gamble on the set-up.
“We didn’t know how quickly the new surface here would dry out – but it didn’t dry fast enough and we had been too aggressive with our set-up.
The first few laps were like an ice rink.”
It was worse for his team-mate Cammish, who was involved with an early brush with Jordan and dropped back to an eventual 11th.
That might have been a nightmare for his title hopes, but it wasn’t – mainly thanks to the troubles affecting his points rivals. Turkington slithered around in the opening laps on the fringes of the top 10 but an early spin, after contact with Rob Collard’s Power Maxed Astra, dropped him to 23rd.
Thanks to the retirement of others and some neat racecraft, he was able to claw his medium-tyred BMW back to 14th, but that was a scant two points.
Jordan, on the softs, had fared better. He was in a bottleneck behind Neal to battle up to 11th but, on lap 12, dropkicked Tom Chilton (Motorbase Performance Ford Focus) to claim a top 10 spot.
When the BMR Racing Subarus of Ash Sutton and Senna Proctor both suffered punctures, that promoted Jordan to what looked like an eventual eighth, just behind Mike Bushell (Amdtuning.com Honda Civic Type R). Chilton was overtaken for ninth on the last lap by Adam Morgan’s Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes-benz A-class.
There was a sting in the tail for Jordan, though, as the clerk of the course assessed his contact with Chilton and determined that he was to blame. The officials issued him with a 6.6s penalty and that dropped him two places down the order to 10th.
Race two
While Turkington would have been distraught to finish the opener and see his advantage at the head of the table shrink from 10 points to six (after Jordan’s slap on the wrist), there was some consolation. Despite starting on row seven, the reigning champion had soft tyres and no ballast, while Jordan had the medium rubber and 12kg, going from 10th.
A rain shower (again) just before the start had teams in a dilemma again but all went for slicks.
Ingram led into Copse from Plato and Smiley, but the top runners were about to go on a huge adventure. Firstly, Smiley dropped back to fifth to help out his closely following team-mate and points battler Cook, but that allowed Oliphant to jump into third place.
There was trouble coming for leader Ingram, though. As the pace went away from the Corolla on its softer rubber and Plato zeroed in, Oliphant was keen on making progress too. The BMW man looked to the inside of Plato down the Wellington Straight on lap 10, and
Plato went to defend. The Vauxhall then lunged for the inside of the leader and nudged Ingram wide, which delayed the Astra and Oliphant cannoned into the side of Plato.
As they emerged, Oliphant collected his moment faster than the others and claimed the lead from Ingram and Plato.
As the rain intensified, on lap 13, Morgan slipped out of ninth spot and into the gravel at Becketts. That meant a safety car.
Before they could reach the first safety car board, Cammish and Plato, who had been battling for third, got together at Brooklands. That allowed Turkington to slip up to a rostrum slot from Plato, while Cammish was delayed.
In the race to the first caution period marker, Cammish and Jordan were toeto-toe and spent the entire three-lap slow train side-by-side (including contact at Brooklands), with neither willing to admit they hadn’t had the advantage when they reached the first yellow flag.
The rain had intensified under the safety car, and it was treacherous stuff when the greens flew, particularly for the rear-wheel-drive cars.
Oliphant had a little wobble at Copse at the get-go which allowed Ingram to reclaim first, while the BMW man was also on the look-out for his title chasing team-mates.
Oliphant moved aside to let Turkington into second place at Becketts, and eventually slid down the order to seventh. The increasingly bad rain persuaded the officials to fly the red flag, which was something that victor Ingram wasn’t that keen on seeing.
“I was happy enough out there,” said the winner. “I love conditions like that where you are on tip-toes and trying to find the grip. It was an intense race and I am not really sure what happened in the contact between myself and Plato earlier on. I had looked in my mirror and saw he was battling with a BMW behind, then all of a sudden I got a nudge. Very strange.”
For Turkington, second place from 14th on the grid and a bigger points lead than he had coming into the race thrilled him. “When you have been around the championship, you know there will be these crazy races,” said the three-time title winner. “My car was brilliant when it was shed of weight – the first time I had driven it like that all weekend – but I was fighting for my life when the rain came. I have to be pleased with that.”
Cammish survived to leapfrog Plato on the second lap of green flag racing, and that sealed third place for him and did his championship hopes a world of good.
“That was an amazing race,” said Cammish, who had started 11th on the softer tyre, but was ballast-free. “It was one where everything just opened up in front of me. I couldn’t do anything about Colin but I will take the points that gives me.”
He actually earned more points, because he was given an endorsement
and three marks on his race licence for his brush with Jordan under the safety car and he was also relieved of £1500.
Plato followed in fourth from the BTC duo of Cook and Smiley. Behind Oliphant, Jordan claimed a battered eighth spot.
Bushell continued his superb weekend with ninth place from Matt Simpson (Simpson Racing Honda Civic Type R), while Sutton’s burn from 24th on the grid to 11th was rewarded with pole position for the reversed-grid race three.
Race three
If the script for the second race at Silverstone had been barmy enough, race three had it all. It was the first in the NGTC era of the BTCC that most of the frontrunners were forced to pit midway through for a tyre swap as rain intensified and it was the strategy call – and the pitwork – that was able to win the day.
As is so often the case, it was the driver who was bold enough to make the decision first who was the biggest winner, and that person was Goff. He had seen the rain intensifying on the out-lap, and he darted for the pits.
Goff said: “My dad was on the radio and he said ‘we are doing it’.
So I did. I really wasn’t sure it was the right call.”
It was a bold gamble, but even he thought it was a step too far when, at the end of three laps, the safety car was called for.
Goff said: “I figured I was in real trouble then – I knew that the others would take the option to pit too, and then they would gradually reel me in.”
When he returned to the track, and amid the confusion of those who had stopped and those who hadn’t, the VW CC driver was battling with Sutton’s Subaru. The BMR Racing driver had pitted at the end of lap five, which was when the safety car was still out.
However, the adjustments to the estate-shaped car took longer than some of his rival machines and he was held at the pitlane exit as the queue went past, which meant he lost a lap.
He had prodigious pace and was able to battle ahead of Goff, but the leader was unaware that the Subaru was a lap down. He hit the front on lap 14 and, with a bit of luck, stayed there.
“I tried to keep with Sutton because I knew I was still in the hunt somewhere, but I locked up and I nearly went off,” said Goff. “I backed it off and then, over the last five laps, the windscreen started misting up and I couldn’t see a thing. I was looking through a 50p-sized hole in the screen, which was all the vision I had. But what a result.”
In second place was another of the early gamblers on a change to wets. Aiden Moffat started from the back row after propshaft failure in race two with the Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50. There was nothing for him to lose by an early swap of Dunlops, and he came in at the end of lap two. That was just as the safety car was brought out, and he was in prime position to capitalise as those around him either pitted or the slick-tyred runners felt the pain of no grip.
Moffat had actually worked his way ahead of Goff as the pair battled up the order but the eventual winner restored the order going into Becketts on lap 11. Moffat survived what he described as “a brown trouser moment” when he spun at Copse on lap 14 but, despite slipping to fourth as a result, he was back in second by the end of the tour.
“That was the first time I have driven a rear-wheel-drive car in the wet,” explained the 23-year-old.
“We just chucked a set-up at it.
I joked to the boys beforehand that I would probably be the one spinning down the track, and I was! But thankfully we got it back together.”
In an eventual third was Neal, who had opted for his tyre swap at the end of lap four, but he wasn’t sure it had been the correct call. “I told the lads I thought it was marginal, because the others were still getting away at that point, but it worked out,” he said.
“As I was climbing back through the order, I got to [team-mate and title hopeful] Cammish and wondered if I should sit and protect his position.
But the differential in grip was so much that I simply couldn’t.”
Cammish persevered on the slicks and eventually finished 12th, which meant he has lost ground in the title chase to Turkington, who was seventh, and Jordan, who was eighth. They followed Oliphant, Chilton and Plato across the line.
The BMW pair had stopped a lap apart on laps three and four. Turkington, who had been further back on track in the opening exchanges, watched what was going on ahead.
He said: “I saw Oliphant and Jordan dive in, and I was wondering if the team would be able to cope with three in all at the same time, so I stayed out. It was a lap longer than I wanted to be honest, but I had to do it.”
When the Northern Irishman returned to the competition, he and Jordan, desperate to limit the points swing between them, were toe-to-toe. Turkington’s car showed some battle scars afterwards, but he was sanguine. He said: “We are both fighting for this title, and we wanted the points. There was a bit of rubbing, but that is how desperate we both are.”
Jordan was equally fine with the battle: “There is nothing left on the table at this point, but we are both professionals.”
They are, and they will go to Brands Hatch in 10 days’ time with 17 points between them. They are not, however, 1-2 in the table as Cammish has snuck one mark in front of Jordan.
The prospects for the three-race showdown in Kent are already lip-smacking.