Tom Onslow-Cole has inherited the race win in the second race at Brands Hatch after his team-mate Tom Chilton was disqualified for having an underweight car. Chilton had originally led home a Team Aon 1-2 but was later found to have failed a technical check. The result is also the closes win in BTCC history after Onslow-Cole only just edged second placed Gordon Shedden across the line by 0.009 seconds.
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Just as in the first race conditions were very wet, with Chilton starting from pole position. However this time Shedden was able to get in front of the Team Aon driver and took an early lead. The race was neutralised under a brief safety car period and it was at the end of this period as the race was about to restart that Shedden gave away the lead – getting fully sideways on the exit of Clearways and dropping down the order. A steely fightback meant that the Honda driver only just missed out on the win.
Finishing in third was Alex MacDowall who was the only other works driver to finish the race after both Jason Plato and Matt Neal were forced to retire due to technical issues. Plato managed only a handful of laps before coasting out of the race with an electrical problem.
Paul O’Neill finished in 4th position for Team sunshine.co.uk with TechSpeed and Andrew Jordan took fifth after fighting his way through from 16th on the grid after problems in race one.
Tom Boardman once again finished in the points in 6th in his Special Tuning UK SEAT Leon. The former WTCC racer had looked to start the final race from pole position but following Chilton’s exclusion will instead start from second. Instead Steven Kane, who finished in 7th, will start race three from pole position.
David Pinkney made up for his retirement from race one by finishing in 8th position. Matt Hamilton, racing an ageing Honda Civic Type-R originally built by the Arena Motorsport squad, took his first BTCC points finish with a 9th placed finish, benefitting from the misfortunes of others around him and driving a consistent race. Rounding out the points was James Nash, who spun from 9th to 10th towards the end of the race.
The other Airwaves BMW of Mat Jackson had been running in second position close to the end of the race but with just 3 laps to go he ran wide and spun down the order. He eventually finished in 11th position, missing out on any points in what is turning into a difficult weekend for the 2008 championship runner-up.
Shaun Hollamby retired towards the end of the race with a problem that means he will not start the final race of the day.