BTCC BOILS OVER AT SNETT
CHAMPS SUTTON AND PLATO EXCHANGE BLOWS
Snetterton was a topsyturvy weekend with three different winners in the British Touring Car Championship and a really bad tempered third race. There were some subtle boost changes before the weekend which would not favour the BMWS (see racing news), but title leader Colin Turkington nevertheless took his 51st career win in the second race of the meeting in his WSR 330i M Sport.
But perhaps the biggest marker had been laid down by his 2018 nemesis
Tom Ingram. He took his Speedworks Motorsport Team Toyota GB Corolla to a win in the opening race, the car’s first non-reversed grid race victory. It marked a genuine step forward for the car and he will be licking his lips for the remainder of the season.
The weekend introduced a rule tweak into the series, with drivers being forced to use all three of the Dunlop compounds – hard, medium and soft – throughout the three events. Drivers didn’t have to nominate which type of compound they were going to use before the races, and the strategy only became clear when each of the cars left the pit garages to head to the grid.
It worked, but the difference in game plans meant there were some big variances in the cars’ performances during the outings. That played into the hands of Rory Butcher, who won the third race in his Amdtuning.com Honda Civic Type R, but the arguments raged late into the night about who had transgressed against their rivals in the final showdown.
Race one
Ingram’s pole position – only the third of his career and his first since Thruxton in 2016 – was achieved by the narrowest of margins from Dan Cammish’s factory Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R.
The tyre choices, despite the alloptions-open twist, were pretty clear for the front men: the top four on the grid, including Sam Tordoff (Amdtuning.com Honda Civic) and Tom Chilton (Motorbase Performance Ford Focus) all went on softer rubber, while Turkington and Jason Plato (Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra) went with the medium tyres from the third row. The only gambler among the leading players was Matt Neal in the Team Dynamics Honda Civic, who went on the harder rubber from eighth on the grid.
“I knew that if I could get away early, I would be able to get my head down and I wanted to have an easy race,” said Ingram. The first part was done with a superb launch to defend from Cammish on the run into Riches.
Cammish looked to the outside as the two approached the opening righthander, but Ingram held firm and claimed the spot. Chilton leapfrogged Tordoff to run third, with Turkington and Plato behind.
“The car was just superb,” said Ingram, who was able to control the 12-lapper all the way to the flag and eventually finished three seconds clear. “The new machine is already as good as the [2016-17 model] Avensis was, and if we can be there after half a season with the Corolla, then I am happy with that.”
Cammish, on the other hand, knew that the 24kg he had on his Civic, which was 18kg more than Ingram, would make things tough and so it proved. He was comfortable in second place, especially when the following Chilton suffered a race-ending puncture on lap five which pitched him into the wall at Coram.
The runner-up knew that he had no answer for Ingram. “There were areas where I was faster but we simply couldn’t keep up over the whole lap,” he said. “The Toyota was in a different place to us and we had to settle for second. I know where the car can be improved, though, and we will do that for race two.”
Third place for Tordoff, his second successive rostrum, was a lonely one. “If Dan Cammish thought Ingram was on a different planet, then Cammish was in a different planet to me too,” said the Yorkshireman.
Perhaps the most impressive performance was a quiet fourth place for Turkington. Carrying the 54kg maximum ballast and leaving the preferable soft tyres alone, he collected an unflustered fourth to extend his points advantage over his WSR team-mate Andrew Jordan, who had usurped Plato on lap 10.
Rob Collard (Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra) was seventh, and followed over the line by Ollie Jackson (Motorbase Performance Ford Focus) and Matt Simpson (Simpson Racing Honda Civic Type R), who scored his best result of the season.
In 10th place, the hard-tyred Jake
Hill (Trade Price Cars Racing Audi S3) had fended off Butcher’s Civic and
Ash Sutton’s Team BMR Subaru, who were both getting the white-walled Dunlop pain out the way too.
The two hard luck stories of the race were Neal and Adam Morgan (Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes-benz A-class). Neal was thwarted after contact with Jackson on lap five, while Morgan’s gearbox broke when he was running well inside the top 10.
Race two
The strategy would have a bigger impact in race two. While the stars of the opening race Ingram and Cammish, and third-placed Tordoff, were opting for the medium tyres to retain some level of competitiveness despite their heavier load of success ballast, both BMWS lurking behind had the softer Dunlops.
The first building block for Turkington’s fifth win of the year was a rocket-like getaway, always a benefit of the rear-wheel-drive cars. He shot between Tordoff and Cammish to chase Ingram over the opening tour as Cammish was forced to look to his mirrors behind.
Ingram was never more than a couple of tenths clear in the lead as Turkington stalked his prey.
Jordan, having also jumped Tordoff early on, stalked his prey too. He sliced inside Cammish in an unopposed move to jump into third spot.
It came to a head on lap seven, when Turkington was glued to the leading Toyota’s bootlid going into the Wilson hairpin. Jordan, who had joined the fight, was trying to go around the outside of his team-mate and Ingram.
The leader was nudged by Turkington which made him wobble and run wide. Ingram had Jordan on his outside and that delayed them both, allowing Turkington to escape in the lead and Cammish, who kept his car tight to the inside, to opportunistically leap into second. Jordan recovered for third from Jackson, while it spelt the end of Ingram’s competitive hopes as it left his Corolla with what he thought at the time was a throttle problem which eventually dropped him to 23rd.
Turkington was left with a decent advantage as Cammish, on the medium tyres, did a manful job holding off Jordan for runners-up spot.
“The plan was that using the tyres this way, with the softs in race two, would work, but you never know if this is going to happen: it is the BTCC,” said now 51-time race winner Turkington. “I was being patient with Ingram. I could see that his tyres were going and he was having trouble with the rear axle, particularly in to Turn 1.
I just had to use the parts where the traction on my BMW was stronger and take my chance.”
Jordan, for his part, said that it was his eagerness to make progress that could have been his undoing. “I was on the radio to the team saying we needed to get on with it: we needed to get by Ingram because the others were closing in behind,” said the Pirtek driver. “I knew I had to take a chance and I did, but it just didn’t work out for me.”
Ingram, for his part, already had his issues in the car but was still hopeful of landing a decent result, even if his defences had been breached.
Speedworks Motorsport team boss Christian Dick explained: “There had been a problem with throttle lag, and that had happened earlier in the race. Tom was managing it though, and we were convinced that even if the BMWS had got ahead we would have been able to come back at them later on in
the race if their softs went off.
“There were some big points for us there, but in the end the wastegate failed and that meant we were having some serious throttle problems.”
Jackson continued his impressive weekend with fourth. He was well clear of Tordoff, while Plato held off Sutton to the flag. They had been saddled with the harder tyre, but Chris Smiley showed what an advantage softer rubber was by powering from 14th to eighth, which would grant him pole position for the reversed-grid finale.
The top 10 was rounded out by Simpson and Hill.
Race three
Smiley knew that he would be a sitting duck on pole for race three, for two major reasons. Firstly, he had the harder tyres to cope with and secondly, he was alongside the fast-starting rear-wheel-drive car of Sutton, who was fitted with the soft rubber.
But it was neither of those who led out of the hairpin at the end of the opening lap. Plato, starting on row two on the harder tyres, had kept pace with the top two as they went side-by-side through Riches, and then grabbed the lead at the Wilson hairpin after a slight brush with a disgruntled Smiley, who says that the Vauxhall man had barged his way ahead.
When Smiley slid wide at Turn 3, Sutton was into second spot and then began an ill-tempered battle between the former team-mates for first place.
Sutton’s soft tyres gave him extra traction, while Plato was using all the tricks he has learned over his career to keep the Astra ahead.
Sutton was first rebuffed at Oggies on lap five, when he tried to go around the outside of Plato but was run out of road – a move that gave the dogged Smiley a chance to grab second back.
Sutton was back into second place a lap later with a move down the inside of Smiley at Agostini, and the closely following Hill was into third as well when he demoted the Honda at Williams, with the softtyred Butcher capitalising too.
On lap seven, the two leaders were at it again: Sutton ran side-by-side with Plato through the opening part of the circuit and managed to complete the move at Turn 3. Plato then nudged into the back of the Levorg into the Agostini hairpin and then the pair clashed again when Sutton tried to go around the outside of Plato going into Williams.
The two maintained top spot, but their bruising exchanges had slid them into the clutches of the everhopeful Butcher.
The major flashpoint came on lap nine. Sutton looked to dive down the inside of Plato going on to the Bentley Straight with a strong move at Williams, and contact was made. That slowed them both.
Butcher saw his chance and, using a superb exit from Williams, eventually made an attack stick on both of the cars in front (who were seemingly absorbed with each other and hadn’t see the Honda flying up onto their bootlids) with a lunge up the inside at Brundle.
Plato, in the middle of the trio, and Sutton on the outside, made contact once more. Sutton spun, and Plato was delayed sufficiently to allow the flying Josh Cook (BTC Honda Civic Type R) into second and Smiley into third.
Predictably, there were harsh words between them afterwards
(see racing news) and Plato was later given a 15-second penalty on his race time, which dropped him to
17th in the final standings.
None of that bothered Butcher, who zoomed to his first on-the-road win with Cook closing him in over the latter stages. Perhaps the performance of the race was Smiley, who maintained his composure for a rostrum finish.
Butcher says that the victory had been a triumph of hard work between himself and engineer Mike Bushell. “We had been struggling across the weekend,” said the Scot. “But we flipped the set-up upside down for the final race and it worked. I was watching what was going on ahead between Ash and Jason, and Jason was certainly defending strongly.
Ash was almost encouraging me to push through with him, but I wondered when to push and when not to. I had to be careful.”
Cook was also pleased to have rescued his weekend after his own set-up struggles.
Fourth eventually fell to Collard, who had started 14th with the favourable softs and no ballast weight. He was helped by team-mate Plato, fading as the event wore on using his white-walled tyres, gifting him the position, before he was dumped down the finishing order.
The BMW of Jordan was another that was going to struggle with 42kg aboard and on the hard tyres, so a run to fifth netted decent points – especially as Turkington could only manage ninth spot in his similarly hampered car.
Behind Jordan, Tordoff claimed a subdued sixth while Ingram performed a monster fightback from 23rd position to seventh. However, the final victim in Ingram’s climb through the pack had been Jackson, and officials later deemed that the Toyota man had been too robust in his final move and demoted him back behind the Ford.
Hill should have been in the hunt for a podium but for a gearbox problem on his Audi. He was disappointed, but not as disappointed as the officials who had faced a late night in sorting out the mess of the fight for the lead.