Matt Neal made it two out of two with victory in today’s second Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship race at Croft.

As in race one, Neal led every lap in his Honda Racing Team Civic but this time was shadowed all the way by Robert Collard’s WSR BMW.

Andrew Jordan finished a distant third in his Pirtek Racing Vauxhall Vectra after first picking off Mat Jackson’s Airwaves Ford Focus and then, in the closing stages, Neal’s team-mate Gordon Shedden.

Notably, it was Jackson’s team-mate Liam Griffin who perhaps caused the most excitement during the race – his car veering left behind the barriers at high speed before coming to rest some 200 yards further on in a farmer’s crop field in what was a truly bizarre incident.

Meanwhile Neal, who also set the race’s fastest lap en route to his second win of the day, has now stretched out a commanding 21-point lead in the championship ahead of Jackson and Shedden. Jordan is up to fourth, ahead of Jason Plato who retired his Silverline Chevrolet Cruze from the race with a CV joint failure.

Neal said: “I never thought we’d win today so to get two is quite unexpected. That was a real game of cat and mouse with Rob and it was a case of pushing at some points of the race and then just winding it back to nurse the tyres and brakes.”

Collard added: “Safety cars don’t play into my hands and just as I was right up with Matt we got one. The BMW loses more temperature in its tyres than the rest when we’re bunched up and going slowly behind the safety car and at the re-start Matt was gone.”

Both Shedden and Jackson struggled for pace in the race’s closing stages. The Honda had damage to a front wing and was splattered in mud following light contact with a barrier at the chicane, while the Ford was proving a handful for Jackson due to an incorrect decision on damper set-up.

This resulted in a queue of cars bunching up behind them by the finish. Tom Chilton in his Team Aon Ford Focus took sixth just ahead of Collard’s team-mate Nick Foster who was seventh thanks to a daredevil move around the outside of Dave Newsham’s Special Tuning SEAT at the penultimate bend. Newsham still took a career-best eighth ahead of Andy Neate and Tom Onslow-Cole who ensured all three Aon cars finished in the top ten.

James Nash, one of the six drivers in the title hunt arriving at Croft, finished 11th and outside the points after a first lap spin in his 888/Collins Vectra. He is now sixth in the standings, some 36 points behind leader Neal…

But at least he finished. In addition to Plato and Griffin, other retirements included Alex MacDowall and Paul O’Neill who stopped in the pit lane with engine problems and broken suspension respectively, the latter after a tangle with Chilton. Tom Boardman caused the safety car period to which Collard referred when his SEAT stopped on the edge of the track with broken steering after a spin and Frank Wrathall’s Toyota also needed to be retrieved by marshals after his Toyota stopped in the gravel trap at Clervaux Corner after a component failure.

Jeff Smith crashed out of the race when, after a tangle with Nash, his Pirtek Vectra ran straight on at the Complex and slewed sideways into the barriers

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