Tom Chilton took a podium in the season opener of the Dunlop British Touring Car Championship, around his local circuit of Brands Hatch. Tom’s third place in race one was also the first podium finish for the new Global Ford Focus Touring Car on its racing debut.

Reigning Independent Drivers’ Champion Tom Chilton bounced back from a difficult qualifying session, with a sterling drive through the field in race one  at Brands Hatch. The 26 year-old made a strong start and was right in the middle of the racing action as the field thundered around Paddock Hill bend. Just one corner later, Tom was perfectly placed to take advantage of an incident amongst the leaders as Matt Neal spun off, and by the end of lap one was already fourth, having passed Matt Jackson and Andy Jordan.

At the restart, Tom had the podium in his sights and got past Alex MacDowall at Clearways to move up to third. From then on the Reigate born racer held onto his position to take his first podium of the season and the first ever for the new Ford Focus.

After a strong start to the season in race one, race two was a more disappointing affair. Tom lost out at the start which allowed several cars through, and by the end of lap one was seventh. A change to the set-up of his Ford Focus after race one wasn’t as positive as Tom had hoped, and struggling with the balance of the car he was soon under attack from Andrew Jordan and Matt Neal while Rob Collard was also piling on the pressure. After 26 laps, Tom crossed the line eighth. If only to compound his bad luck, seventh place was selected for the reverse grid pole, leaving Tom with it all to do again in race three from eighth on the grid.

The final race of the afternoon failed to deliver a dramatic improvement, but the car was more consistent allowing Tom to maintain his position and not drop down the field. In an unusually processional race, Tom crossed the line eighth.

Reflecting on the weekend, Tom said, ““It’s been a difficult weekend, but you have to look on the positives, and in reality we know a lot more about the car now that we did at the start of the weekend and in addition to that, we finished all three races. We had a lot of bad luck with qualifying, but a great first race and came through the field to third. We are still developing the car; we’ve had three days testing in the dry with a brand new car, which is effectively nothing. But we’ve got a much better idea now of where we stand and we know the areas we need to improve on before the next round at Donington.”