BTCC Action Report: Three different victors at Oulton

There were three different winners from the three races at Oulton Park, but it was championship leader Fabrizio Giovanardi who came away from the Cheshire circuit having extended his points lead.

After Saturday things looked like they might be going SEAT’s way. Whilst the turbo diesel Leon’s were expected to dominate at Snetterton, they weren’t expected to be as strong at the twistier Oulton Park. So when a SEAT topped each of the three timed sessions at the end of Saturday, including yet another 1-2 lockout in qualifying, there were concerned faces at some of the teams. Whatsmore, SEAT were so confident of their pace that they sent both drivers out for just a single lap in qualifying, completing the bare minimum required to take the front row.

“The car is now a lot easier to drive and that is where the time is coming from,” explained pole-sitter Plato. “We’ve dialled out the understeer we had earlier in the year and we’ve unlocked some performance in the handling department, so the car is starting to work well.”

Round 19

Working well is exactly what could be said of Plato in Round 19 as he romped away from pole position to claim his fifth victory of the year. Everything didn’t go quite according to plan at the start for SEAT however, as the Honda of Tom Chilton beat Darren Turner to the first corner. Behind him the Vauxhall’s of Fabrizio Giovanardi swapped positions from their grid spots to follow in fourth and fifth, whilst the third Vauxhall of Matt Neal was already having a race to forget. Having got off to a terrible start, the former champion was judged to have missed his position on the grid and handed a drive-through penalty as a result.

Throughout the opening laps of the race the Team Halfords car of Chilton was pressured hard by the SEAT of Turner until lap 4 when Turner made a move on Chilton into Cascades. With the SEAT driver thinking he was in front, he attempted to take the inside line through the corner whilst Chilton was fighting back on the inside, resulting in a massive slide for Turner that saw him drop to seventh place. “Obviously we came out of the last corner pretty similar,” explained Chilton. “He was alongside me and he ended up trying to turn in front of me thinking he was that much faster but he wasn’t and he wasn’t a full car ahead, so it was his fault really.” The incident damaged the rear suspension of Turner’s car, upsetting the handling and meaning he could salvage no better than sixth place by the finish.

Giovanardi applied some pressure to Chilton thereafter through the first half of the race, but carrying maximum success ballast and with such a lead at the top of the championship, the Italian opted to settle for a comfortable third and his tenth podium of the year. “I am very pleased to secure third as now I will start from row two in the next race,” he said after the race.

Colin Turkington had a strong race, moving from eighth on the grid to seventh by the end of the first lap. He inherited sixth place as a result of Turner’s slide and immediately began pressuring Gordon Shedden for fifth place, finally getting by on lap 7 as a result of a good exit from Lodge corner. The recovering Turner was also able to follow past, leaving Shedden in seventh place and a position he would finish in. Turkington, on the other hand, moved up to fourth with two laps to go by passing former team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole and the Northern Irishman took the independent win once again.

Sheden’s race was not to be free from incident. Running seventh, he began to come under pressure from the Honda Integra of Mike Jordan who had been making progess through the field after starting from fifteenth. As the duo ran side-by-side along the start straight on lap 12, Jordan came over on Shedden and was sent crashing into the pit wall, followed by the barriers at the frist corner. The incident would spell the end to Jordan Senior’s weekend, with damage to the chassis of the car preventing any participation in races two or three.

Elsewhere it was a relatively ordered affair, typical of the first race of the day. Adam Jones ran ninth for much of the race, inheriting eighth place by the end as a result of Mike Jordan’s retirement. Both Motorbase Performance drivers, who had struggled much like the other BMW performers in qualifying, came through to take the final points paying positions in ninth and tenth.

But it was Plato who was the clear victor in scorching hot conditions, winning by nearly two seconds and setting a new lap record around the track. “There was some failry stiff fighting going on behind me for second and that enabled me to get my head down and get the gap,” said Plato. “Once you get the gap around here, especially in these hot conditions, I think the others lose perhaps more than we would in terms of lap time. So it’s just a case of not making any mistakes, looking after the car, maintaining the tyres and then if Tom did get closer I’d just put a little squirt in, open the gap again and that would have demoralised him.”

Round 20

Jason Plato began from pole again, holding his lead through the first corner as the Team RAC BMW of Turkington made another customary good start to move into second position. Giovanardi once again struggled off the line and lost a position into the first corner with team mate Onslow-Cole once again behind in fifth. It was to be another dismal race for the unlucky Darren Turner, who was forced to retire on the opening lap with a broken trackrod.

SEATs troubles continued again on the second lap of the race when Plato began to slow with more of the mysterious engine troubles that have plagued the team since Snetterton. Plato continued to go around until 10 before eventually calling it a day. “It’s very frustrating,” he explained. “We don’t know what’s causing the misfire, but we have to try and get to the bottom of it.”

This left Colin Turkington leading the race from Fabrizio Giovanardi, who had managed to pass Tom Chilton on the second lap. Turkington was clearly enjoying the conditions and handling of his BMW 320si, and went on to take victory by a massive 6.7 seconds, the largest winning margin of the year. After the race, Turkington enthused: “The team have worked hard to give me a great car today - the best all season and I’m delighted to reward them with another high scoring day.”

Giovanardi followed home in second for yet another podium finish, once again showing the consistency and pace of the Vectra. The Italian drove cleanly without overdriving the car and inherited two positions only when the cars in front hit problems. To make things even more comfortable he was followed home by team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole, who also set fastest lap on the way.

Tom Chilton, who had started the race in second thanks to his first race performance, had a difficult race as a result of circulating with broken suspension. By the chequered flag he had slipped down to eleventh place, thanks in part to locking up at the Knickerbrook chicane. The rules in place over the weekend meant that Chilton had to bring the car to a standstill for taking to the escape road, losing him a handful of places. There were further frustrations in the Motorbase camp as Rob Collard was forced to retire early on with unexplained engine problems. With the team unable to pinpoint the problems, they opted to fit a spare engine and were left with a race against time to get the car ready for the third race of the day.

Whilst one car was proving troublesome for Motorbase, the other was flying as Steven Kane drove a superb race to finish fourth and collect yet more valuable points in the championship. From ninth on the grid he kept the pressure on Chilton to eventually take fourth place. The battle caused a concertina effect behind, however, which proved to the benefit of fellow BMW racer Mat Jackson who took two positions and came through in fifth by the end of the race. Adam Jones finished sixth, battling for much of the race with Chilton and Jackson and was followed home by Matt Neal who drove a recoery race from fifteenth on the grid.

Round 21

The reverse draw for race three handed pole position to ninth place finisher Andrew Jordan, with Gordon Shedden alongside on the front row. It would be the second time this season that the youngster had been handed pole position for the final race of the day, having earlier been at the front at Thruxton. This time, though, the Team Eurotech/John Guest driver was able to hold onto the lead at the start.

There was chaos at the chicane on the first lap when Tom Chilton, who missed his braking point, careered into the side of Steven Kane’s BMW putting an end to both driver’s races. “I went for the brakes and there was absolutely no retardation, so I realised the car wouldn’t stop,” Chilton told autosport.com. “If I’d have just gone straight on then I’d have caused a crash, so I turned right onto the grass to try and avoid everyone. Unfortunately I still hit Kane.” A disappointed Kane later said: “It was crazy and it cost the team a result. I had 48kg of ballast, but the car could definitely have been in the top five.”

Despite his best efforts, at the restart on lap 4 Andrew Jordan was unable to keep the Team Halfords car of Gordon Shedden behind and he lost out to the Scot as they accelerated along the start straight. An unflustered Jordan kept his head down and only lost his second position at the every end of the race witrh two laps to go to Adam Jones. Suffering from tyre wear, Jordan went wide at the Island hairpin and it was all that the waiting Jones needed. “I ran a bit wide at the hairpin and Adam got past me and then Mat Jackson was right on me for the last couple of laps,” said Jordan of his mistake. Despite slipping back at the end, he was understandably jubilant on his first ever BTCC podium. “It’s definitely the biggest day of my career so far,” he added. “To do it at this level and be up on that podium is amazing. I’m not normally speechless, but I am now. There’s a lot of emotion in it.”

Adam Jones took second and equalling his best result of the year after a strong race running with the leading pack. Fourth for the first half of the race, he passed Jackson on lap 7 before eventually nipping up the inside of Jordan on lap 14. Jackson finished fourth in the end, unable to mount a serious overtaking challenge to the top three drivers.

Matt Neal was the best of the Vauxhall drivers and indeed of the works cars, heading off team-mate Fabrizio Giovanardi at the finish. Despite starting from third, Neal immediately slipped back into a position that he would finish in. “I got a cracking start in this race, but unfortunately all the other front runners seemed to do the same!” summed up Neal. “I tried so hard to catch Mat Jackson in fourth, and I was so close at times but I just couldn’t make it happen. Overall it is a reasonable points finish so I am pleased, but the car felt so good I really hoped that more points were coming our way.”

Championship leader Fabrizio Giovanardi had to work his way up from eighth to sixth by the end of lap 4. The Italian then had an incident free race to sixth, safe in the knowledge that main rival Jason Plato was behind and having to fight his way through the pack.

And fight was exactly what the SEAT driver was doing. After being involved in the first lap shunt, Plato found himself languishing down in seventeenth at the end of the first lap with seemingly a mountain to climb. But he picked off car after car and was in the points by lap 11, despite a coming together with John George and having to defend from Onslow-Cole who also suffered in the first lap melee. By the end of the race ninth place was all he could manage, meaning that Giovanardi once again extended his points advantage.

Heading the SEAT of Plato in eighth was Rob Collard who put in an impressive drive after starting in 20th place. Hailing the car as fantastic, Collard was catching the seventh placed BMW of Colin turkington before he ran out of laps and had to settle for eighth.

SEAT’s day of mixed fortunes continued when Turner, who had been running in seventh, began to slip backwards. The result of yet more engine woes, he was almost eighteen seconds per lap slower than the leaders and as a result finished a lap down in last place scoring only for SEAT in the manufacturers championship.

The final points paying position went to Jason Hughes who surely had one of his best drives of the season. One of the drivers to benefit the most from the first lap skirmish, Hughes ran in the points for the whole race and was as high as seventh before slipping back gradually to the faster and newer cars.

Commenting on his win, Shedden said: “It’s an amazing result to get the win. We had struggled a bit in the first two races but we worked hard to improve the car and it was amazing in the final race - it was a different animal. All credit to the guys at Team Halfords and to my engineer Eddie who came up with a masterplan for the third race which worked. For much of the day I thought it was going to be another one full of bad luck, so to finish on a win is awesome. I made a good move on Andrew Jordan near the start and could control it from the front, so to go away from here with a win ahead of my home round at Knockhill is a huge boost for the whole team.”