WSR MG driver Anthony Reid and SEAT Sport UK’s Jason Plato were the winners of Croft’s three Green Flag British Touring Car Championship rounds yesterday, while Vauxhall team-mates Yvan Muller and James Thompson have left the North Yorkshire circuit separated by just three points at the top of the table as the title race heads to Knockhill in Scotland on 8 August.
Reid, the leader of the HarrierZeuros Independents Trophy for privateer competitors, started the first race from pole position and took full advantage to lead all the way for his first victory of 2004. Reid, third in the overall championship standings, also set the race’s fastest lap to earn an extra point and assure himself of a maximum score.
Muller took second but was under pressure throughout from Computeach Racing with Halfords Honda driver Matt Neal, who slid off the track on the final lap but still managed to finish third. Thompson was fourth, just able to hold off Huff and Reid’s WSR team-mate Colin Turkington who completed the top six. Tenth, and guaranteeing himself pole position for the second race thanks to the reversed grid rule, was Stefan Hodgetts in Team Sureterm’s Vauxhall Astra.
Hodgetts, however, was unable to capitalise on his pole position: a fault with his car away from the line in the second race meant he was overtaken by several drivers and at the first bend his race cruelly ended in the gravel trap after a shove from another car. His day would end violently in the third race when a wheel fell off his car and caused him to spin out at high-speed, but not before he had brilliantly climbed from last on the grid to 12th on the opening lap.
His demise in the second race left Plato, who had started alongside him on the front row of the grid, in the lead – a position he comfortably held to the chequered flag. Behind, SEAT team-mate Huff squeezed past Computeach Racing with Halfords’ Dan Eaves for second. Eaves desperately tried to get back in front, but Huff resisted his advances to follow Plato across the line and give the ecstatic SEAT team its first 1-2 result in the BTCC.
Eaves’ third place gave him victory in the Independents Trophy. He was followed home by Thompson and Neal, who managed to scrape past Muller for fifth with a lap to go. Muller’s sixth position meant his championship lead over Thompson heading into the day’s third race was just five points.
Turkington, who had got in front of Neal at one stage, and Reid, again setting the fastest lap, were right behind in seventh and eighth. Team Honda’s Tom Chilton was ninth, having started last following retirement in the first race, ahead of Shaun Watson-Smith, impressive as ever in his Team Petronas Syntium Proton Impian.
Plato and Huff’s 1-2 had guaranteed them first and second on the starting grid for the third race. It was Huff who led the opening laps, thanks to a brave move around the outside of Plato at the first bend, and for a while he looked to be heading for the first BTCC race win of his career. Plato, however, managed to pull him back in and eventually eased by into the lead. The pair, this time under serious attack from first Thompson and in the late stages Turkington, again held station at the front to give SEAT a second 1-2 finish.
Turkington took third after several aggressive moves: he first barged past Eaves who was sent into a spin and made another place when Neal’s Honda hit mechanical problems and retired. The WSR driver eventually made the final place on the podium his own when he scythed past Thompson who then had to drive defensively to hold back the lurking Muller. In the end, the Vauxhall team-mates took fourth and fifth and, as a result, Thompson has closed the gap to championship leader Muller to just three points with 12 rounds to go – the first three of which will be at Knockhill on 7-8 August as the picturesque Scottish circuit makes a welcome return to the BTCC calendar.
Plato’s win, meanwhile, has moved him up to fourth in the overall standings ahead of Neal and to within nine points of third-placed Reid who finished the third race in sixth, the front end of his MG bearing the scars of a particularly robust 15 laps. This, though, did not prevent him from yet again achieving the race’s fastest lap.
Chilton was seventh after pushing his way past Watson-Smith who, as a result of their contact, ran wide and slipped back to tenth behind Vauxhall’s Luke Hines and the Astra of reigning Independents Trophy champion Rob Collard – at last getting into the points after a scrape in the first race with James Kaye’s Synchro Motorsport Honda and then retirement in the second with a gearbox problem.
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