HONDA CIVICS LEAD ATIN-TOP VICTORY ROUT IN HAMPSHIRE
WINS FOR TORDOFF, COOK AND CAMMISH ON SUPER-FAST TRACK
It was another weekend when the chasers in the race for the British Touring Car Championship came to the fore. The victories at Thruxton were shared out between Sam Tordoff ’s Amdtuning.com Honda Civic, Josh Cook’s BTC Racing Civic and Dan Cammish’s Team Dynamics-run similar Japanese machine.
The heavy hitters in the points chase, the BMWS of Andrew Jordan and Colin Turkington, were left with slim pickings without truly being able to get on top of the handling of their rear-wheel-drive WSR 330i M Sports.
The German cars still sit on top of the pile, but the pressure is coming from the others. There are now only nine races to sort out the destiny of this year’s crown and the early-season dominance of the BMWS seems like a distant memory.
It’s boiling up nicely.
Race one
With a slight boost revision to the
BMWS ahead of the previous meeting at Snetterton, there were questions to be answered in qualifying as to the impact it would have on the Wsr-run machines.
Turkington and Jordan came to Hampshire carrying heavy weight, and so their 11th and 13th positions on the grid respectively might have had something to do with that. Team-mate Tom Oliphant, free from any impediment, was seventh.
That left way clear for Tordoff to plant his Civic on pole from Jason
Plato (Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra), ahead of Cammish’s FK8 and a rejuvenated Adam Morgan in the re-engineered Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes-benz A-class.
Plato was desperate to leap into the lead from the off and gave it his best shot, running side-by-side with Tordoff around Allard and putting the heat on the leader going into the Complex for the first time, although the Japanese machine held sway.
Plato’s impressive getaway had perhaps been helped by the fact he had lined up slightly ahead of his grid markings, which would lead him to dart into the pits at the end of the second lap to take the resulting drivethrough penalty.
That left Tordoff with a gap of almost one second to Cammish. The Team Dynamics man had survived a bruising time at the Complex on the opening tour, with Morgan glued to the bootlid of the second-placed machine.
Even with Plato gone, the respite for Tordoff up front didn’t last too long as Cammish chipped away at the gap and spent the last couple of laps right in the hunt for the lead. The order would ultimately not change.
“I got the radio call about Plato’s penalty at the end of the opening lap, and that was a relief,” explained Tordoff, but he wasn’t completely off the hook. “I bet the team on the pit wall thought I was managing [the gap and the pace in the race]. But, in reality, the car was very difficult and I was never comfortable – that was one of the hardest 16 laps that I have done. Cammish was too close for my liking and now we are going into the next race with full weight. We have got work to do to the car.”
Cammish, too, was another to be frustrated. “We aren’t quite there with the car, and we have to ask questions as to why they [AMD with the older FK2 Honda] can win and why we can’t,” he said. “I was struggling a bit to hold on to the car and there were bits where Tordoff was just better than us.”
Cammish had been forced to produce something of a defensive drive too, because as he closed on Tordoff, Morgan gave him no easy ride. The Mercedes driver, who hadn’t featured on the podium since Brands Hatch’s opening meeting of the year, was revelling in his reborn machine but simply was pleased to return to the rostrum.
“The car was great, and we need to build our weekend from here, so I wasn’t going to risk anything,” said Morgan. “Cammish was faster than me through Church, but I was happy to take what I could.”
He would also have been mindful of the closely-following Cook, who was having one of his most competitive outings of the summer having hit the sweet spot straight away at a circuit he likes, with a machine that has proven speed around the venue. Although he couldn’t tackle the hatchback ahead, he was less than half a second away at the flag.
Oliphant was a lonely fifth from Rob Collard’s Power Maxed Vauxhall Astra, up from 10th on the grid after a banzai start, while Amdtuning.com Honda Civic driver Rory Butcher survived a physical battle with Chris Smiley’s newer BTC Racing version – which involved contact going into the chicane on lap seven – to claim seventh.
Smiley eventually fell prey to a flying train of midfield runners, which was topped by Matt Neal in the Team Dynamics Honda Civic after some smart overtaking moves (and with a much more preferable set-up than that which had led him to a lowly 17th in qualifying). They helped him to land eighth from
Ash Sutton’s BMR Racing Subaru Levorg. Smiley followed.
Despite a wobble at the Complex on the opening lap, which dropped the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla of Tom Ingram from eighth to 10th, he was clinging on to a position inside the front order when the bonding on the passenger window failed on the hatchback, which caused extra drag on the high-speed parts of the Hampshire speedbowl. That restricted him to 11th at the flag.
An amazing start from Jordan vaulted him ahead of team-mate Turkington, but the two of them faded as the race went on and could only manage 12th and 13th.
Both were complaining of inconsistent handling of the WSR 330i M Sports.
While team boss Dick Bennetts pointed to the different direction of the reasonably strong breeze causing trouble for the cars at some of the higher speed sections around the back of the track, the drivers were more concerned.
Jordan said: “We are going to make some big changes because the balance simply isn’t there in the car anymore.”
Turkington was the same: “Without the success ballast [he had carried 54kg] for race two, we are going to have to see what happens and Oliphant was quite quick in that race, but I am not sure it is only that is the only reason [we weren’t on the ultimate pace]. We just can’t seem to get the car hooked up here.”
Race two
While Tordoff ’s run to race one victory was relatively untroubled, he was anything but in the second encounter – despite the best efforts of those around him.
Fellow front-row starter Cammish bogged down at the switch of the lights, which enabled Morgan to grab a solid second on the run to the Complex with Cook in his wheeltracks. Collard and Oliphant followed.
Morgan’s prodigious pace and Tordoff ’s struggle with the 54kg of success ballast always looked like it would lead to a firecracker of a race, and it didn’t take long to spark into life. The laden leader’s glory out front came undone at Church on lap four when he missed the apex, causing the closely following Morgan to check up.
Morgan went to the inside of the Honda, while Cook kept his foot in and went around the outside. Eventually, Cook had inched past the two of them to sweep around the outside going into the chicane and claim a lead he wasn’t to lose for the remainder of the 12 laps.
“I knew that I had managed to clear Tordoff heading into the braking zone, but I wasn’t so sure about Morgan because he was in my blind spot. I was on the outside so I just braked as late as possible and it worked.”
He escaped the clutches of Morgan, who
was again revelling in the handling of his car but all was not running smoothly – the clutch had failed in the early stages and hat meant he was labouring to the flag. t would force the hard-working team into an engine change before race three.
Once deposed from first, Tordoff begun a plummet down the order that would eventually lead him to cross the line n 10th spot. It was later discovered that he had been losing power with debris in the air intake, which meant the AMD team too had to change an engine before race three.
Oliphant looked as if he would be the main beneficiary, picking up a lonely third place. Unable to match the pace of the top wo, he was comfortable until the charging Neal arrived on his bootlid on the final lap. An aggressive set-up had given the car a new lease of life and he had sprung from eighth on the grid to pick them off one by one. Even going onto the last lap, a rostrum inish looked unlikely but he chipped away and pounced on Oliphant on the run up Woodham Hill on the final tour.
“Tom was being careful with his tyres and was cautious through Church. I went o go to the right and he blocked me, so I switched to the left. Then he braked earlier han I expected,” said Neal. “It nearly caught me out and I went to the outside.” The Honda braked later and Neal made t to third by the apex of the left-handed element of the Club chicane.
Behind Oliphant, Cammish was ruing his sluggish getaway with fifth ahead of the lonely Collard. While those two might not have had too much to shout about in a subdued performance, retiring Thruxton boss Bill Coombs put a smile on their faces when he pulled Collard on pole with Cammish alongside for the reversedgrid final encounter.
Jordan’s tweaks (and less success ballast) pushed him to seventh from Ingram and Turkington in ninth, although the two BMW racers were complaining that the saloon-shape cars were struggling in the traffic.
Tordoff ’s team-mate Butcher, who had been on the cusp of the top six early on, dropped back through the pack and finished 14th, behind Sutton and Tom Chilton’s Motorbase Performance Ford Focus.
Race three
Collard, with only 24kg aboard his car, was licking his lips at the prospect of the final race in his home county. He would have been even happier when he looked in his rear-view mirror when the cars reached Allard and he saw Oliphant’s BMW in second place, as the WSR man leapt ahead of Cammish’s Honda.
It took Cammish nearly three laps to restore himself to second place with a neat move down the inside of his prey into the Chicane, and he set off in the Vauxhall’s wheeltracks.
Collard, whose Vauxhall was gobbling up the fast sweepers at the back of the track, said he had the race under control. Until the heavens began to open, that is.
“I had the legs on him, I think,” said Collard. “I could gap him coming out of Church, but he would slipstream me and get alongside, but I had just enough in hand. Then is started to drizzle, and I was the first to find it.”
He did with a minor slip at Church, which took away the strong suit in his armour in his defence against the Civic. Cammish gleefully accepted the gift, drafted alongside his rival and completed the move before the braking point for the Chicane on lap 10.
Then the onus of pressure shifted. Cammish was the one finding the track increasingly treacherous.
“I was on the radio to the team asking them to tell me just how bad the rain was around their side of the circuit, because it always looks worse when you are in the car,” said Cammish. “They were telling me it was fine, but I was sideways going around Allard so I am not sure that was true…”
Indeed, the weather closed in and the track was sodden over the final three laps. “They were the longest I have ever had,” said the winner. “I was trying not to throw it away. It was on ice.”
Collard claimed second, with Neal storming through to third place at the flag after having spent the whole event fending off Morgan’sa-class.
They had both leapfrogged Oliphant as the soaking circuit, less favourable to the rear-wheel-drive cars, pushed him down the order – so much so that the charging Plato, up from an incredible 13th on the grid, and the fully ballasted Cook, also managed to depose him before the flag.
Behind Oliphant, Ingram emerged ahead of what had been a physical battle with Sutton for eighth, while Jordan rounded out the top 10.
Points leader Turkington had been another to struggled when the rain came and was on a damage limitation exercise over the closing laps, ceding late ground and crossing the line in 13th.
While that might not give much of a reward, it meant that he left the track with a 30-point lead over team-mate Jordan, which was only six less than he had coming into the weekend with. However, and ominously, the 23-point buffer that Jordan had to those chasing behind was down to just four. The threats are coming to the BMW steamroller, but are they going to be too little, too late?