Tom Chilton fought his way through the field to score two top 10 finishes and record a fastest race lap during an eventful weekend's racing at Croft.
The works Honda British Touring Car Championship driver had to pull out all the stops to rescue a good result from the sixth round of the series after a disastrous race one result. From sixth on the grid, Tom made a strong start and was side-by-side with the SEAT of Rob Huff going into the first corner, the right-hander Clearveaux.
"I was alongside him, but not far enough ahead to be able to turn in," explained Tom. "There was contact and I went off over the grass and this damaged the front splitter."
The broken splitter also punctured the Civic Type-R's left front tyre, which forced him to limp back to the pits for repairs. When he rejoined he was almost a lap behind the leaders, but despite the damage to the front of his car, he still lapped quickly, but from so far back there was no way to improve on 19th place.
"Even though the splitter was broke I was still lapping as quick as the cars in the top 10, so that really gave me hope for the second race," Tom said.
With the starting grid for race two decided but the race one result, Tom lined up at the back of the field. Croft is probably the most difficult track to overtake on in the UK, but Tom showed it could be done and stormed through the field to take ninth place, setting the fastest lap for a works BTCC car in the process.
"Because of the race one result, I was running at minus 24kilos and I was just handing it out through Sunny In. I passed at least five people through there. To come from 19th to ninth at a track where it's so hard to overtake was fantastic."
Tom knew that it would be almost an impossible task to repeat his race two performance in race three, given the quality of the cars and drivers ahead of him. But he made a strong start from the fifth row before going onto spend almost the entire race dicing with race one winner Anthony Reid and the fast-starting Shaun Watson-Smith. The Proton driver held Tom and Reid up, to the extent that Reid gave the rear of Tom's Honda a mighty whack at one stage. The racing was hard, with all three drivers exchanging paint at some stage, but it was Watson-Smith who came off the worst, dropping back to 10th after one of these collisions.
Reid nicked by to steal sixth, leaving Tom to grab another useful haul of points in seventh. It wasn't the result he'd been expecting after setting the third best time in final practice, but given the circumstances he faced after race one, it was a valiant effort.
"Arena have done a great job on the car and Neil Brown's development on the engine was a really good improvement. It's a shame about that first race, but the other two were good and setting fastest lap is a really positive sign."
Arena boss Mike Earle was pleased with the way Tom overcame he race one misfortune.
"Our weekend was ruined by what happened in race one really," he said. "But he did well to recover like he did. The pace is definitely there, he just has to learn how to use it."
The BTCC heads to Scotland for its next round at the Knockhill circuit. The races will be held on Sunday August 8.
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