BLUNDELL TIPS HILL TO CHALLENGE FOR 2021 BTCC TITLE
Team boss hails his driver’s development as Ford Focus man tops the standings after three rounds
Team chief Mark Blundell has praised Jake Hill’s maturity and talent as the British Touring Car Championship driver walked away from the opening weekend at Thruxton with three podiums and the points lead. Hill finished third three times and his final rostrum came after a stunning drive on slick tyres in changeable conditions. He sits one point clear of
Josh Cook, who took his BTC Racing Honda Civic to two wins in Hampshire. Blundell, who contested the BTCC as team-mate to Hill in 2019 before forming the MB Motorsport squad in 2020, said that Hill would only get stronger as the season progresses.
“There was such a level-headedness about the way Jake approached the races, there is a real maturity in his driving,” said the 1992 Le Mans winner Blundell. “Even in the tough conditions in the final race, he got his head down and got on with the job. I was listening in on the pitsto-car radio, and he handled it perfectly.
“The exciting thing is that we performed really strongly as a team, and there will be even more to come from Jake and his team-mate Ollie Jackson, that’s for sure.”
Title credentials for the BTCC have been laid out, and they have come from some unlikely quarters. Two wins for BTC Racing Honda Civic man Josh Cook in Hampshire had him in the boxed seats before he was scuppered in a rain-hit third race. The finale was claimed by a superb Ash Sutton in his Infiniti Q50.
They might have taken the biggest trophies, but Jake Hill walked away with the points lead in his MB Motorsport Ford Focus. The Kent driver’s podium in race three in a slick-shod car on a damp track was a real work of art.
Race one
Cook has an enviable reputation in a Honda around the Hampshire circuit. He had been a winner on each of his three previous visits in the FK8-spec Civic but lining up on the front row with the faststarting rear-wheel-drive machines of Sutton ahead and Colin Turkington’s WSR BMW 330i M Sport behind was always going to be a concern.
By the time they were halfway around the opening lap of the season, the BTC Racing Honda driver was on his way to a ninth career BTCC win.
Sutton had put the power down nicely to reach Allard ahead with Turkington behind him, but the fireworks kicked off as the pack slowed for Campbell. As the cars checked up, Turkington gave the slightest of nudges to the leading Infiniti and the reigning champion spun. Turkington already had Cook to his outside, and the small contact delayed him enough for the Honda to emerge ahead.
Cook’s opening-lap drama wasn’t finished as he held on to a massive slide at Goodwood. “That? That was nothing,” said the cool-as-you-like driver. “It might have looked dramatic from the outside, but it was all under control. The car has to be loose to start with to make sure the rubber lasts the race. It didn’t faze me!”
Cook’s slithering held the attention of Turkington though. He was again forced to delay the throttle slightly while his rival collected the moment. That was the only invitation Tom Ingram, right in the wheeltracks of the top two, needed to thrust his Excelr8 Hyundai i30 into second spot.
Turkington ran wide at Church further around the lap, which caused the closely following sister BMW of Tom Oliphant to spin to the infield and allowed Hill to steal a march on the run up Woodham
Hill to grab third place.
Further back down the road returnee Gordon Shedden (Team Dynamics Honda Civic) was making his way through the midfield (after having a lap removed in qualifying for a track limits infringement), but disaster struck for the Scot on the exit of Noble.
As Ollie Jackson’s MB Motorsport Ford Focus collected the kerb and tapped the brakes, Shedden was left with nowhere to go. They made contact, and the Honda slid back across the pack and into the path of Chris Smiley’s Excelr8 Hyundai. The pair had a sizeable collision.
“I don’t want to blame anyone, but we were in a freight train and there were people braking all around,” said threetime title winner Shedden. “I tried to go to the right to avoid making contact with the back of Jackson’s car, but that put me on the grass and I was a passenger from there.”
That brought out the safety car and gave everyone some breathing space after a highly dramatic first half-lap of 2021.
When racing restarted on lap seven, Cook knew it was his chance. “I simply had to make a break when the green flag flew,” he said. “I put my foot down and banged in some fastest laps. That’s what secured the win for me, but Ingram made me work hard for it.”
Ingram was 2.2s back at the end of the race but was nursing the Goodyear rubber that he felt had dropped off badly towards the end. Hill secured the final podium slot after a tense 19 laps where he was forced to fend off Turkington throughout. Turkington would have been happy to collect fourth-placed points but the officials wanted to look at the incident with Sutton on lap one. They did, and determined that the Northern Irishman was to blame. To the letter of the rules, they penalised him with 17s added to his race time, which placed him behind Sutton in the final order. Sutton therefore claimed ninth, while Turkington was 10th.
One-off returnee Dan Cammish pulled off probably the move of the race to leap from an on-the-road seventh to fifth in one corner. Rory Butcher held fifth in the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla but had to look to his mirrors to defend from the feisty-looking Jason Plato in his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra.
Plato made a late lunge for the position at Campbell on lap 13, but ran slightly wide. The pair went side-by-side though Cobb. When Butcher reasserted himself ahead of Plato at Segrave, the duo had only served to slow themselves up so much that Cammish, who had taken a wider entry into the right-hander, was able to out-drag them on the run to Noble.
The BTC Racing man was thrilled with what would become fourth after the postrace penalties. “I thought’s Plato’s move on Butcher was a really good one,” said Cammish. “I didn’t think Butcher would try to hang around the outside at the second part of the Complex but he did and I could see what was coming. I just had to bide my time, take a wider entry into the corner and then get on the throttle to overtake them both. I was pleased with that.”
Dan Rowbottom took an impressive seventh on his debut with Team Dynamics in the Honda Civic Type R to head home Adam Morgan’s Ciceley Motorsport BMW 330i M Sport.
Race two
Cook’s blast to the opening corner in race two was helped by Hill and Ingram disputing territory into the right-hander, while Butcher and Cammish mirrored the battle behind. However, by the time the cars reached the Complex, the red flags were flying.
That was because Andy Neate (Motorbase Performance Ford Focus) collected the back of Glynn Geddie (Team Hard Cupra R) going into Allard. Jade Edwards (BTC Racing Honda Civic) travelled towards the outside barrier too and all three hit the wall hard. Geddie’s car was launched in the impact. Neate was later fined for his part in the crash.
At the second time of asking, Ingram spotted his chance to charge for glory and the Complex on lap one would be crucial. He tried to power around the outside of Cook and it looked like he’d done it when the Honda’s rear end slewed wide.
Cook was saved from rotating by cannoning into the Hyundai alongside and they both slithered off the track.
They regained the Tarmac with Cook ahead and Ingram delayed. Cammish pounced on the poor get away from Hill to grab third, which became second when he profited from Ingram’s woe.
As the tight pack behind, comprising the recovering Ingram, Butcher, Hill and a closely following Plato, reached Noble on the opening tour, there was further grief as Butcher’s Toyota got away from him on cold rear tyres and slid hard into the outside wall on the approach to Goodwood. Cue the safety car for five laps.
The restart was much calmer. Cook held Cammish at arm’s length for the 10 laps of full-speed racing, although the two BTC Racing machines were very close.
Cook, who grabbed his second fastest lap of the weekend to boot, collected his second big trophy. “It was hairy at the start and Tom and I both went wide at the Complex, but I gave him room to get back on. I am grateful to my team-mate Dan, who was behind me after that, because he could have made my life a lot more difficult,” said the winner, who did admit that the 75kg of increased success ballast this season had taken its toll on his tyres.
“You have to have the car loose early on...” Josh Cook
Cammish had been on the radio to the team over the closing stages as he knew he had more pace than the leader, but followed the squad’s instructions to help Cook’s title quest. “I am just pleased to show what I can do,” said Cammish. “And I have shown I can do the job for the team when I need to. But fair play to Josh – he is awfully fast, particularly around Church…”
Hill took another podium on his first weekend with the Ford Focus and reported that it was even better in the second event. His prognosis was that work on the set-up had been beneficial over the course of the afternoon.
Again, Rowbottom was one of the stars of the race as he rose from seventh to fourth spot, a charge that included excellent passes on Ingram and Plato. Plato followed the Honda over the line, while Ingram fended off Turkington to the flag to bag sixth.
Ninth place for Sutton might not seem like much to celebrate, but it was a mammoth damage limitation exercise after a turbo boost problem sent him into the pits under the safety car. The team returned him to the action and he again sliced up the order, including a late pass on a lacklustre Shedden (who finished 18th), to bag the position.
Race three
The final encounter reminded people just why they had missed the BTCC since the end of 2020. Sutton scored his maiden win of the year, Plato used all of his skill and guile to land second place, and it could have been so much more, while thirdplaced Hill was cruelly robbed of what would have been a fantastic triumph.
The showers that came just as the cars took to the grid threw everyone’s plans up in the air. There was a split in the tyre choices but Sutton, going from row two on the reversed-grid line up, made short work of muscling his way to the front when he barged ahead of poleman Stephen Jelley (WSR BMW 330i M Sport) on lap two.
The wet weather-tyred cars were the things to have. Some slithered around on slicks – notably Ingram and Cook, although that pair would later be handed 30-second stop-and-go penalties for switching tyres too late on the grid. Tom Oliphant had dry rubber too on his WSR BMW and, while he ran at the front, he was carrying a five-second penalty for an out-of-position getaway.
In 19th spot after the opening lap despite having started in ninth, Hill was left wondering whether his choice of dry rubber was folly. That was particularly true when he was 18s adrift of Sutton after three laps, but the tide started to turn.
The Ford Focus man put on a virtuoso display, clambering through those struggling with wilting wet Goodyears to go from 12th on lap seven to third on lap eight. One tour later, he jumped ahead of Sutton. It seemed like the game was up for the rest – until the pesky rain returned.
Those who had looked after their wets – Sutton included – started to turn the wick up again. Despite a valiant defence, Hill fell prey to the Infiniti with just three laps to go. Plato had backed off mid-race to preserve his treaded rubber and beat Hill in a dash to the line. Still, Hill’s third on slick tyres was the drive of the weekend.
Shedden’s weekend was saved by a glorious motor from 18th to fourth, and he was within a hair’s breadth of the battling Plato and Hill ahead.
Sutton was thrilled: “I thought I had won it at the start, then I thought I had lost it to Jake, and then I thought I had won it again. What a roller coaster race.”
Plato was left fuming, feeling he had been held up by the lapped Cook on the last lap. Hill was beaten by the old master by 0.070s, but still walked away with his third podium and the championship lead by a single point. “I think that was my best BTCC drive yet,” he smiled. It was.