Tom Chilton was denied a second Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship race at Brands Hatch yesterday for a technical infringement on his car.
Chilton crossed the line in first position for what appeared to be his second win of the day.
However, his Team Aon Ford Focus then failed a mandatory technical check and he has subsequently been disqualified from the results.
A revised result sees his team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole inherit victory with Gordon Shedden and Alex MacDowall moving up to second and third respectively and so forth.
Technically, it also means the closest-winning margin in BTCC history, Onslow-Cole having beaten Shedden across the line by just 0.009s (beating the 0.015s between Jason Plato and Chilton here last year).
Race 2 Report:
In similar wet conditions, Chilton led home team-mate Tom Onslow Cole for a Team Aon 1-2 finish. As in race one he also set the fastest lap in his LPG turbo Ford Focus, despite it carrying maximum success ballast. Third was the Honda Racing Team’s Gordon Shedden. He had led the opening stages but slipped off the track and down the order at the restart during a safety car period.
Championship leaders going into the race, Jason Plato and Matt Neal, both retired from the race with mechanical problems on the cars. Plato’s Chevrolet stopped with an electrical glitch and Neal’s Honda Civic with a clutch failure. Their retirements meant a fifth place result for Paul O’Neill has moved him between them, up into second in the standings. Should he win race three – O’Neill will start from third on a top-seven reversed grid – he could mathematically come away from Brands leading the championship.
Shedden took the lead at the start and led the opening laps from Chilton. But at the restart following a safety car period – to recover Lea Wood’s Honda Integra and Arthur Forster’s BMW which had both slithered off the track – he overcooked it and half span exiting the final bend, Clark, and although he controlled his car and continued he fell to seventh as the race resumed.
Chilton was thus promoted into the lead but almost immediately there was a second safety car period as Andy Neate’s WSR BMW was recovered from the Stirlings gravel trap. Chilton, though, again judged the restart to perfection to draw clear for his second win of the day in what was to be a topsy-turvy race.
Indeed, his task was made easier as those behind tripped over one another as they fought for second position. Onslow-Cole eventually took the spot by just nine thousandths of a second from Shedden as their cars crossed the line virtually neck and neck. Sunshine.co.uk/Tech-Speed driver O’Neill had also been right in the fight for second but found himself muscled down to fifth by Alex MacDowall, a career best fourth in his Silverline Chevrolet Cruze.
An excellent sixth having started 16th was Andrew Jordan in his Pirtek Vauxhall Vectra. Fellow Vectra driver David Pinkney who started 19th was also in the points in ninth. And there was a first-ever BTCC point in tenth for Matt Hamilton in his TH Motorsport Honda Civic Type R.
Notably, Airwaves BMW’s Mat Jackson took 12th after a spin in the closing stages – shortly after relinquishing second to Onslow-Cole. Fellow BMW driver Robert Collard was 13th having been forced off track into a spin himself on the opening lap as he got caught up in a tangle with O’Neill and Neal, which initially dropped the latter right down the order.
Elsewhere, other retirements included Martin Johnson’s Boulevard Vauxhall Astra with a holed radiator, Martin Depper’s Forster Motorsport BMW which spun into the gravel at Paddock Hill Bend and Shaun Hollamby’s AmD Milltek Racing.com VW Golf with a mysterious brake problem which caused him to go off track.
