HILL APOLOGISES TO NEAL AFTER OULTON PARK CLASH
Audi driver was stripped of first BTCC win after colliding with three-time champion
British Touring Car Championship racer Jake Hill has apologised to rival Matt Neal after the two collided in the final race at Oulton Park on Sunday and Hill was stripped of his on-the-road victory.
Hill’s Trade Price Cars Racing Audi S3 had started from the reversed grid pole but Neal, alongside in the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R, overtook at the start of lap two on the run to Old Hall corner. The pair collided on the exit when Hill touched the rear of the Honda, which then spun across the bows of the following pack.
Neal ended up in 12th place while Hill went on to win, but the on-theroad victor was slapped with a 20-second post-race penalty which dropped him to 14th. That also promoted Neal one place.
It would have been Hill’s first win in the championship, and the first for the Audi S3 and the Trade Price Cars Racing squad.
Hill explained: “Matt obviously got the move done down the inside [into Old Hall] fair and square, then I got the cut-back. He has gone to defend my cut-back and he has taken the front of my car and I have caused him to spin and lose out. I can only apologise sincerely to him. It was in no way intentional.”
Hill said he was startled by a post-race confrontation when Neal stormed into parc ferme as the on-the-road winner was about to be interviewed by ITV4. Neal received a £1000 suspended fine, while Hill also collected two penalty points on his licence for the contact.
“The first thing I was going to do once I had finished at the podium was to apologise to him formally,” added Hill. “I am just gutted. It was a bit aggressive [to come into parc ferme] which is not on, especially with ITV cameras there. Pulling me aside is one thing, but doing it like that in public is another. I expected more from a three-time champion.”
Neal said that the move had put him in real jeopardy and that had caused his frustration.
“Jake had got into the side of me at the hairpin on the lap before and I thought to myself ‘that’s not like Jake’,” Neal said. “He was obviously a little bit het up.
“I thought I didn’t want to race with Jake because my car was fast. So I got the switchback going out of Lodge and down into Old Hall, and it was done. And then on the exit, he didn’t even get into the side of the bumper, he got into the back of the bumper and he turned me around.
“We could have lost a car from that, never mind the danger it causes to the other people on the track. People like that forget Keith Odor [former BTCC driver who was killed in a tin-top accident in Germany in 1995] and people like that, they just do the moves.
Things like that can happen.”