BTCC: Three Part Thriller Upon Snetterton Return

After over a month off the track the British Touring Car Championship picked up where it left off at the Snetterton Circuit in Norfolk, with three different race winners.

Honda’s Dan Cammish set the pace in Free Practice topping both sessions but he missed out on his first pole of the year by 0.002s to the Toyota Corolla of Tom Ingram. Championship leader Colin Turkington wrestled his BMW 330i to fifth on the grid despite a centre of gravity adjustment to the BMW’s and a boost increase to all non-BMW runners as the series looks to balance the performance levels of all cars.

A dramatic weekend looked to shake up the championship, though at the conclusion of Snetterton, Turkington extends his lead by three points, with just four weekends for the opposition to catch him. Joe Ellis takes us through the action.

Race One

An even start at the front for both front and rear wheel drive cars in a somewhat uneventful start for touring car standards. Ingram held the lead from Cammish and Tom Chilton who moved up from fourth to third at the start after impressing in the mid-season test. Matt Neal ran eighth on the hard tyre (one of three compound used over the weekend with each being driven once) before contact with Ollie Jackson’s Ford left him unable to continue and he was forced to retire.

Halfway into the race and it seemed all settled with Ingram pulling a lead over Cammish with Chilton third but the latter suffered heartbreak at the end of lap five as a puncture sent him into the tyre wall at Coram and ended his race. Adam Morgan was also running well in the top ten before he had to pull off with a gearbox issue. From then on it was status quo at the front as Ingram took his second win of the year ahead of Cammish and Sam Tordoff who kept it clean and finished off the podium. Turkington followed the Honda home for fourth.

Podium: Ingram / Cammish / Tordoff

Race Two

A super start from Turkington moved him up to second behind Ingram, with Jordan also moving up into fourth. Jordan was able to move past Cammish for third before the turn two hairpin on lap seven where Ingram was nudged wide by Turkington – who took the lead as a result – and Jordan had to try and go round the outside of the Toyota which left the door open to Cammish to pass both cars on the run to turn three. Ingram continues to lose places and eventually finishes outside the top ten.

The incident at the hairpin left Turkington with a big lead which he never relinquished to take his 51st win of his BTCC career and fifth of 2019. Cammish held off the attacks of Jordan for second, the BMW third.

Podium: Turkington / Cammish / Jordan

Race Three

Chris Smiley’s eighth placed finish in race two saw him drawn on reverse grid pole for race three but the clear favourite was Ash Sutton who would start second on the favourable softer option tyres. But despite Sutton’s rear wheel drive and tyre advantage, he couldn’t pull ahead of Smiley off the line but he did get past when Jason Plato launched his Vauxhall Astra into the back of Smiley’s Honda and forced him wide. Plato took the lead as Smiley dropped back to third. Ollie Jackson’s good weekend continued as he ran fourth before an unforced error in the middle sector let a charging Jake Hill through into P4 from tenth on the grid.

Smiley briefly re-took second from Sutton as he attempted to take the lead but the Subaru’s superior agility meant it didn’t last long. Rory Butcher had caught the train at this point and was able to follow Hill past Smiley for fourth and third respectively.

But then came the real talking point. Sutton did brilliantly to cleanly pull alongside Plato in turns one and two before getting past at three with no contact, but Plato didn’t like that one bit and used his car as a battering ram to push Sutton wide at turn four and retake the lead. He again unnecessarily forced Sutton off the track at turn seven as the ex-teammates went head-on in combat for the lead of the race. It all came to blows on lap nine as Sutton and Plato ran side by side down the Bentley Straight but Butcher got a super double toe and made it three-wide into the left handed Nelson corner. Butcher made it through but Plato again made contact with Sutton leaving the latter facing the wrong way on the grass. Josh Cook and Smiley both found a way past Plato’s Vauxhall immediately after, with Rob Collard also gaining a place on his teammate on the final lap.

All the battling meant Rory Butcher could stroll home for his second win of 2019 and first on the road after inheriting his race three Brands Hatch win earlier in the season ahead of the BTC Racing pair of Cook and Smiley. Race three also saw Excelr8  Motorsport’s Sam Osborne score his first BTCC point, finishing 15th, just ahead of Cammish.

Podium: Butcher / Cook / Smiley

In a post-race interview, Sutton held nothing back in voicing his displeasure at his former teammate calling him ‘Brainless’ and revealing that the BMR team would lodge three(!) appeals against their former employee for his driving in that final race.

After all that, it’s still Colin Turkington atop the BTCC standings, 36 points clear of Andrew Jordan and a further 22 from Rory Butcher who jumped up to third after an off weekend for Josh Cook.

The series heads back to the high-speed roller coaster Thruxton for it’s second visit of the year in two weeks time on 18th August, a place where Jordan took two race wins back in May.