Team Aon Ford Focus driver Tom Chilton took a crushing victory in the first of Sunday’s three Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship races at Brands Hatch.
Chilton’s win, in heavy rain and spray, is the first for an LPG-powered car in the BTCC and also the first in the series for a Ford in a decade. His winning margin was more than five seconds and he also set the race’s fastest lap. It is also his first win in the BTCC for more than two years.
Second was the Honda Racing Team’s Gordon Shedden and third Chilton’s team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole who came through from ninth on the grid.
Chilton said: "I felt I was doing quite well in my swimming trunks and goggles out there! Normally my specs steam up when it's wet but not today. The Focus is the best car I’ve ever driven in the wet. It did everything I asked. We have got it set up perfectly.
"A first win for LPG, the first for Ford since 2000, two Toms on the podium - just a great result for all the people in our team. We even had one chap do a 43hr shift without sleep back at the workshop. Just great."
Meanwhile, Shedden’s team-mate Matt Neal was fifth to close the gap to series leader Jason Plato who was eighth in his Silverline Chevrolet Cruze. There are now 14 points separating them going into this afternoon's second race.
Chilton led the race all the way but in the opening stages needed to defend from the attacking Robert Collard who made a sensational start to go from fifth to second into the first corner in his WSR BMW. But almost immediately the safety car was required, albeit briefly as James Nash’s Triple Eight Vauxhall Vectra was left beached in the Surtees gravel trap after a clash with Plato.
Chilton then judged the re-start to perfection while, behind, Onslow-Cole dived past Plato in Paddock Hill Bend. A lap later and Shedden’s Civic was past Collard at Westfield into second which he would hold to the finish. Neal also then overtook Collard exiting Stirlings but almost immediately ran wide at Clark Curve, allowing both the BMW driver and Onslow-Cole to sneak back past him into what were now third and fourth positions. Those positions would soon be reversed, permanently, when the Ford driver got by into the final podium spot at Surtees Bend.
Neal also briefly fell behind Plato for fifth when he slid wide at Surtees but was quickly able to re-assert himself and hold the position to the finish. Plato, his car heavily ballasted, would eventually slip to eighth as first team-mate Alex MacDowall moved by and then both their Chevrolets were passed by Paul O’Neill’s Sunshine/Tech-Speed Honda Integra. O’Neill’s lunge past Plato into Clark Curve was arguably the move of the race and followed a similarly audacious pass around the outside of Tom Boardman’s Special Tuning UK SEAT Leon at Paddock Hill Bend. Boardman would still take a strong ninth.
Mat Jackson survived a trip through the gravel to finish tenth in his Airwaves BMW, just clear of team-mate Steven Kane. Both were briefly challenged by Martin Johnson in his ten-year-old Vauxhall Astra, the Boulevard team driver revelling in the wet conditions and on a great charge back up the order following a spin until, cruelly, his car’s alternator belt broke just over a lap from home.
Lea Wood was another to star in one of the older BTC-spec cars, finishing 13th on his debut in his Central Racing Group team’s Honda Integra in what was also his first-ever race on the full Brands Grand Prix circuit. Fellow newcomer Martin Depper took a cautious 15th in his Forster Motorsport BMW.
Joining Johnson in retirement were Andrew Jordan, who for a long time had run comfortably inside the top ten in his Pirtek Vauxhall Vectra until it stopped with a misfire in the pit lane with just one lap to go, and Depper’s team-mate Arthur Forster who span into Paddock Hill gravel trap.
David Pinkney was another non-finisher, having run as high as eighth in his Pinkney Motorsport Vectra before spinning out at Hawthorns Bend – an incident which required a second safety car period. Local ace Shaun Hollamby retired his AmD Milltek VW Golf in the pit lane early on with driveshaft failure. Sunshine.co.uk/Tech-Speed’s John George appeared seven laps into the race but returned to the pit lane immediately with a misfiring engine.
