BTC Racing’s Josh Cook was pleased to bounce back from what he described as a “long day” to secure second position in the third British Touring Car Championship race at Snetterton.
Cook struggled with a damper issue yesterday throughout practice and qualifying, and opted to run the less favourable hard tyre in the opening race to shed the success ballast off his Honda Civic Type R.
He told TouringCars.Net that despite a “demoralising” race one as he struggles to find a “sweet spot” whilst carrying weight, he was happy to capitalise on no weight and the optimum tyre in race three.
“It’s been a long day. We know that with the weight in we’re still working on finding a sweet spot,” said Cook.
“Because we had the weight in, we thought we’d just take the hard tyre in race one and get rid of it. That aside, it does demoralise you a little bit for the day but we had some good pace in race two.
“We just took a bit of damage which meant that we were weak in areas where we would want to normally overtake. As soon as we went into race three we were still a bit down, but being on the soft tyre we tried to capitalise as much as we could.”
Cook continued to say he felt the contact between erstwhile leaders Jason Plato and Ash Sutton “cost him a win” because it allowed eventual victor Rory Butcher a large gap which Cook couldn’t bridge.
“Seeing how many people were on the hard tyre in front – and there was a big bunch of people on the softs so we wanted to get past those and lead the way through the pack if you like,” explained Cook.
“Luckily that’s how it played out. The little touch between Jason and Ash probably cost us a win there because we had some real strong pace and if we’d have got through better.
“I was catching the three of them, and I think we would have at least we would have been able to challenge for the lead.
“Rory was gone. The way it panned out it meant that me and Chris [Smiley] were on the podium so mega job for BTC Racing, I couldn’t have asked for much more.”