Jason Plato stormed to victory in the opening British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Silverstone, heading an MG 1-2 with Sam Tordoff second ahead of Honda’s Matt Neal.
Click here for the full race one results.
The MG drivers very nearly came to blows at Copse on the first lap, with Tordoff’s car stepping out as he looked up the inside of his teammate. That allowed the fast-starting Colin Turkington into second place, the BMW man having dispatched the challenge of Dave Newsham off the line.
Newsham looked determined to gain back his third place coming into Brooklands on the opening lap, but he leaned too hard on his tyres after hitting the brakes late and half-spun his Toyota Avesnsis, dropping back into the middle of the pack.
Will Bratt and Nick Foster then collided on the exit of Woodcote in the middle of a bunch of cars, with Bratt spinning into the pit wall and Foster collecting Andy Neate, the pair ending their races in the gravel trap opposite.
A safety car was eventually deployed to clear the debris on the pit straight, but not before Tordoff had worked his way back past Turkington, a move that some believed had been completed under yellow flags.
The move was however to prove decisive when the racing restarted on lap eight, with Plato and Tordoff waltzing away at the front.
Having suffered a disappointing qualifying session, Neal bullied his way through the field with some fantastic passing moves into Becketts, making his way past both Collard and Turkington to claim a fine podium position – albeit after only beating Turkington by 0.008s with the Honda driver ensuring he had enough fuel to finish the race.
Collard was a strong fifth in the second WSR BMW, with championship Andrew Jordan leader resisting the urges of Adam Morgan for sixth place. Airwaves duo Aron Smith and Mat Jackson finished eighth and ninth respectively, with Newsham recovering to tenth after his first lap incident.
Neal’s teammate Gordon Shedden struggled to make the same progress through the field, eventually finishing 11th after a trying race where he gained two positions late on after Dan Welch made a mistake and Frank Wrathall fell away.
Warren Scott had a good run to 16th having started last, but it was a disappointing encounter for fellow Team HARD. driver Jack Goff, who had to retire with front end damage having secured his best qualifying result a day earlier. Lea Wood won the Jack Sears Trophy battle, after Liam Griffin was forced to retire.