It was ‘lucky number seven’ for Team BMR’s Árón Smith in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) at Oulton Park, with the Irishman racking up three points finishes, and finishing seventh in two of the three races.
Smith headed to the Cheshire circuit off the back of mixed weekends previously at Donington Park and Thruxton, where finishes outside the points cost him in the title battle.
Smith was seventh not only in two races, but also in second practice in qualifying. Remarkably, Smith then went on to post the seventh-fastest race one time to secure the grid position for race two, before starting race three from seventh after missing out on the reverse-grid draw.
The Irishman enjoyed battles with team-mate Colin Turkington and Honda’s Gordon Shedden in race one on his way to fifth. Overtaking proved to once again be difficult at Oulton Park, and Smith finished race two where he started in seventh.
The same turned out to be true of race three, with another seventh place finish a result after losing out to Turkington, but gaining a position when leader Adam Morgan was hit with a drive-through penalty.
“It’s been a funny old weekend really as we seem to have stuck to the number seven for most of it!” said Smith. “Overall it hasn’t been a bad weekend. Our last couple of weekends have been a bit up and down, so this weekend has been good in terms of securing three good finishes towards the championship.
“Oulton is a tricky track to make up places and qualifying didn’t exactly hook up for me. From that point onwards it was a case of delivering three sensible drives and collecting a heap of points. I’ve left Oulton happy with my performance and we’ve some testing planned before Croft which will be a big positive.”
As a result of a trio of top ten finishes, Smith moves up to ninth in the drivers’ championship, 64 points behind team-mate Jason Plato.