Formbook torn up at BTCC Brands
Tom Oliphant was only just denied a double by Tom Ingram, and Dan Rowbottom scored a pole position. But it’s still an Ingram-versus-ash Sutton title battle
On last weekend’s Safari Rally, the Hyundai crews were among those having to watch out for the elephants; at the concurrent Brands Hatch British Touring Car Championship round, the top Hyundai driver had to work his way past an Oliphant. The absence of a BTCC title under his belt notwithstanding, Tom Ingram is renowned for having the tusks of an absolute top-liner. But what was impressive was that Tom Oliphant packed into his trunk the best weekend of his career, a superbly judged win, and 50 out of 51 laps led across the first two races.
The missing 51st of those laps was the culmination of an utterly superb second race of the day, in which Ingram, on form again with the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N, dived down the inside of Oliphant’s West Surrey Racing-run BMW 330i M
Sport on the final lap at Paddock Hill Bend. Contact was made, there was some tandem drifting that would appeal to earringed youths with noisy exhausts and banging stereos, and Ingram had the inside line for the following Druids hairpin. Job done.
This was a weekend that had no clear narrative, no building to a climax, the three races seeming to take place in complete isolation from each other. It was Oliphant who claimed the highest points score with 38, from Ash Sutton on 36 and Ingram with 35. Stalemate among many of the leading contenders, but not Oliphant’s celebrated team-mate Colin Turkington: the lesserfancied of the BMW men’s achievements look even better when you consider the four-time champion’s score of a measly two points from the day.
Oliphant had what can be described as a breakthrough on Sunday: his first nonreversed-grid BTCC win in the first race; a close third (after Ingram passed him, he was pipped to the line for second by Sutton) with 75kg of success ballast aboard the BMW in the second. “I feel it’s the best I’ve driven so far, and I’m taking a great deal of pride at the fact that I’m racing against the world’s best and establishing myself, so that when I’m at the front I can convert it into a win,” he beamed. Yet the breakout hero of the previous day had been the guy you might regard as his opposite number at the Team Dynamics Honda squad, and with whose path he converged controversially in that second race on Sunday: Dan Rowbottom.
The bearded Midlander may look a little like David Brent, but by contrast he’s a humble, softly spoken chap, who was absolutely ragging that Civic Type R on his way to pole position. Yes, Rowbottom was carrying no success weight, but three-time
champion Gordon Shedden was hardly laden either on 9kg, yet it was the team newboy who edged the returning superstar by 0.005 seconds for his maiden BTCC pole. Rowbottom’s Civic looked truly alive through the left-right of Surtees and Mclaren, kicking up the dirt on the second apex; Shedden’s less so. “To be honest it felt scrappy,” admitted the poleman, “but when they said purple-purple, I knew we’d put the lap together. The guys have made it really easy. Gordon is fantastic, and the things
I’m not doing right he points out.” Shedden also used the word “scrappy” regarding the difficulty of finding a clear lap, and admitted that “a little bit of a problem for me is trying to turn the thing on over one lap”.
Although the Honda runs came relatively late in the session, there was a theory that the track was actually quicker earlier on. “We decided to wait quite a long time for our last run, and I think that was a mistake,” opined Jake Hill, who’d been sitting on pole before that late Civic charge, despite his Motorbaserun MB Motorsport Ford Focus transporting 39kg of ballast around the Indy Circuit. “I think the track was slightly faster at the beginning, even though the Hondas went faster later on.” The performance was a massive turnaround from free practice, where the Ford squadron languished on lap times and, unusually, almost at the bottom of the speed traps. Oversteer at Clearways had been causing that, so a set-up rethink was required and Hill was grateful to the team for “working their socks off”.
Oliphant set no fewer than five laps good enough for fourth on the grid in his unballasted BMW, and that boded well for him in the races. So it proved. The BMW burst through to lead the front-wheel-drive cars that had qualified ahead into Paddock, and from laps three to 22 of the 24, it was never out of the 49.0-49.3s bracket. But there was a faster car closing in…
The start had gone a bit pear-shaped for Dynamics. Rowbottom was “just trying to be clever to minimise wheelspin, but I tried a bit too hard!”, and was seventh by the end of the opening lap. Shedden, meanwhile, lost a position not only to Oliphant’s BMW, but also the similarly rear-driven Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50 of fellow Scot Aiden Moffat, who had really stepped up to bag fifth on the grid. In Shedden’s bid to keep the Infiniti behind, he conceded another place to Ingram’s Hyundai, which had qualified an impressive sixth with 66kg of ballast.
Ingram then reported “I was Sheddened”
“I’m taking a lot of pride at the fact that I’m racing against the world’s best and establishing myself ”
at Clearways. The contact allowed the Honda back up to third, dropped the Hyundai to sixth, and earned Shedden a reprimand. Now ‘Flash’, with Sutton’s Infiniti (on the maximum 75kg of ballast) behind him, was homing in on Moffat. On the fifth lap, Shedden got a small overlap on the inside of Moffat exiting Paddock, as Sutton simultaneously tried an outside pass. Moffat pulled over to defend, and there was slight contact with the Honda. As they reached Druids, there was further contact and Shedden was through.
The gap to Oliphant was almost four seconds, but from half-distance Shedden brought it down, setting fastest lap as he did so. It seemed that Oliphant had enough in hand, and even a minor delay lapping the incident-delayed Hyundai of Rick Parfitt Jr at Surtees on the final lap couldn’t deny him. “The top three were on an upslope or level, and I knew I was on a downslope,” said Oliphant of the start. “And the weather’s been iffy and cold, so I knew I’d have more grip. They all drifted right [to the inside] and I took the opportunity to go around the outside. Then I just absolutely attacked for a few laps. I allowed Gordon to eat into it, but I wanted to have the tyres left in case there was a safety car.”
“The car felt really good – we just lost track position early on,” said Shedden.
“It took three or four laps to manoeuvre my way past Aiden, and I just left myself with too much to do.”
Rowbottom, meanwhile, could feel proud for picking his way through a war between Hill, Ingram and the Infinitis to move up to third. By the time he’d done that, the best of his tyres was gone, so it was a case of consolidating third, and a maiden podium.
Now Rowbottom had 57kg of ballast on his Honda for race two, with Oliphant’s BMW on 75kg. This time it was Shedden who was slow away, and a knock from Hill, who had won that heavy-ballast war for fourth in the opener into Paddock, sent the Honda into a half-spin. Somehow Shedden got it pointing in the right direction, but was now down in 13th.
As they started the second lap, Stephen Jelley in his WSR BMW had a run on Shedden, who moved over to defend on the run to Paddock. That forced Jelley onto the grass and, out of control, the BMW bounced across the track, ushering Shedden into the gravel. While the Honda rejoined the track at the back of the field, now very much out of contention for the day, Jelley hit the barriers, and the safety car was called out.
“Hill took me off at Turn 1, which was a bit naughty really,” grumbled Shedden. “And then Jelley… I don’t know. He was on the grass into Turn 1 and then that was that. Game over really.” For his part, Jelley explained: “Initially he moved up the circuit so I went for the gap, and he’s moved back across when he’s realised I’ve gone for the move. He left me with no option.” Neither Hill nor Jelley received any reprimand.
Oliphant did though. You could actually feel a little sorry for him, for an enormous
2.045s first-lap advantage over Rowbottom, eked out with 75kg of lead on that BMW, had been eradicated due to a safety car caused by an incident involving their respective team-mates. Arguably, if not for that, he could have made it two wins out of two. As it was, he came under pressure from Rowbottom, which culminated in a clash exiting Druids just after half-distance, and a ticking off in the TOCA bus for Oliphant.
“Oliphant makes his bed, he can lie in it later in the season,” fumed Dynamics boss Matt Neal. “Dan said before that he thought he [Oliphant] was all right [and indeed, Oliphant had publicly congratulated Rowbottom for his pole], but now I’ve told him he knows what to expect.” Oliphant replied: “You should look at yourself before other people. Going to the outside of Druids is a risky move [from Rowbottom]. I had full lock, I applied the power, and I thought he was wheelspinning his fronts. My car drifted to the outside and he was there.
It’s a racing incident – something that happens a lot in touring cars.”
The delayed Rowbottom lost just one place to Ingram, who had moved up to third when a left-front puncture sent Hill flying off the road at Mclaren. Ingram now had Oliphant in his sights. He’d taken the Hyundai to sixth in the opening race, falling away from the Hill-sutton fight for fourth, and therefore had 33kg of ballast – 42kg below Oliphant’s BMW. He prodded, he probed, and finally the opportunity came. “Tom left me a massive gap, and I’m not going to not fill it on the last lap, am I?” bubbled Ingram. “I’d been showing my nose to see if he’d react to defend. Then I showed my nose, he didn’t defend it, and I didn’t need a second invitation.” Oliphant proclaimed that “I really enjoyed” the race, but couldn’t stop the BMW drifting wide at Clearways on the final lap, and was pipped at the line by Sutton, who had demoted Rowbottom to fourth at Surtees on the penultimate tour.
None of those leading contenders featured at the front in the processional reversed-grid finale, thanks to Ingram drawing number 12 and consigning their ballasted machinery to the midfield. Sutton made a couple of late moves to get up to eighth, four places ahead of Ingram, and re-establish himself back in a points lead he had lost to the Excelr8 man in race two.
It was a weekend of what the reigning champion described as “damage-limitation”. Sutton and his BMR engineer Antonio
Carrozza reckon their data indicates that 75kg of ballast costs 0.25-0.3s around Brands Indy, so to qualify seventh, 0.296s from pole, was satisfying. “If that is the case, we should have been battling around with the Hondas at the front,” Sutton theorised. “I was really pleased with that, and Aiden was right up there as well, so that’s good for the team.”
The phlegmatic Sutton didn’t really have any complaints about a shove from
Hill at Clearways that cost him fourth in the opening race – after all, he was ahead of Ingram, who he has identified as his main threat: “We focused more on what he was doing and where he was.” And he wasn’t stressed about a similar incident with Ingram on the opening lap of race two:
“Tom gave me a little love tap. I was, ‘OK,
I’ll go with you, we’ll work together’.”
And it was with a c’est la vie air that Sutton explained the reversed-grid race as “just the nature of the beast. When you’re stuck with the weight in the middle of the pack, progress is hard. But once I was clear of Chris Smiley [Ingram’s team-mate and acknowledged BTCC hard man], it was good.” Such calmness from Sutton. He didn’t win on Sunday, but he’s kept his series lead. He dealt with the Oliphant in the room, and the elephants in the room of the Honda and Hyundai pace.