Colin Turkington claims authoritative race three win

Colin Turkington claimed an authoritative win in the final British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Donington Park, reducing his deficit to the championship lead to 32 points.

Team BMW’s Turkington jumped clear at the start, having been drawn to start on the reverse-grid pole position, as behind him Team Dynamics’ Daniel Rowbottom and MB Motorsport’s Jake Hill held their positions.

BTC Racing’s Josh Cook made a better start than Laser Tools Racing’s Aiden Moffat to move into fifth, whilst points leader Ash Sutton, who had started eighth, was muscled out wide at the first corner and dropped two places.

After just one lap of racing the safety car was required when Carl Boardley made contact with Sam Smelt on the exit of the first corner, turning the Toyota into the path of Excelr8 Motorsport’s Jack Butel, with both cars coming to a rest on the infield.

Racing resumed on lap four, and from there Turkington was able to gradually build up a comfortable lead, as Rowbottom dropped away.

News then came in that Rowbottom, Daniel Lloyd and Nicolas Hamilton had been given five-second time penalties for false starts.

Rowbottom raced in second until lap 11, when Hill got up the inside at Coppice corner. As Cook tried to follow the pair made contact and the opportunistic Moffat passed both Rowbottom and Cook for third.

The podium places remained unchanged thereafter, with Turkington claiming his 60^th win to draw level with Andy Rouse, ahead of Hill and Moffat.

Rowbottom held fourth on the road until the chequered flag, but following the application of his penalty the Team Dynamics driver dropped to sixth, promoting Toyota’s Rory Butcher to fourth and the Honda of Cook to fifth.

Power Maxed Racing’s Lloyd was seventh, the Vauxhall driver’s own five-second penalty not costing him a place due to the margin he had to the car behind.

Eighth was Sutton, with the Infiniti driver gaining one place back on the restart when Senna Proctor went wide at the Old Hairpin and lost four places, followed by another crucial pass on Excelr8’s Tom Ingram on lap 12 on the run through Schwantz curve.

BMW’s Stephen Jelley helped his team-mate’s title campaign by passing Ingram three laps from the end for ninth, with the Hyundai driver himself completing the top ten.

MB Motorsport’s Ollie Jackson had a dicey race to 11^th, ahead of the leading Team HARD CUPRA of Árón Taylor-Smith in 12^th.

Race one and two winner Gordon Shedden could only manage 13^th, ahead of Team HARD’s Jack Goff and PMR’s Jason Plato, the latter failing to gain ground after being pushed out wide in race two and ending up with a mid-pack grid placing for race three.

After the first lap the only other retirement was BTC Racing’s Proctor, who pulled into the pits with an issue on his Honda on lap 11 after running in 11^th at the time.

In the drivers’ championship, Sutton leaves the Leicestershire circuit with an advantage of 32 points over Turkington, having entered into the event with a gap of 36 to Ingram.

Ingram himself is a further six points behind Turkington ahead of the season finale at Brands Hatch in two weeks’ time.

Race result

POS	NO	CL	NAT	DRIVER	ENTRANT	CAR	LAPS	TIME	BEST	GD
1	2	M		Colin TURKINGTON	Team BMW	BMW 330i M Sport	18	22:27.150	1:09.499	1
2	24	M		Jake HILL	MB Motorsport accelerated by Blue Square	Ford Focus ST	18	4.096	1:09.766	3
3	16	I		Aiden MOFFAT	Laser Tools Racing	Infiniti Q50	18	4.945	1:09.875	4
4	6	M		Rory BUTCHER	Toyota Gazoo Racing UK	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	18	7.401	1:09.611	9
5	66	I		Josh COOK	BTC Racing	Honda Civic Type-R	18	7.752	1:09.823	5
6	32	I		Daniel ROWBOTTOM	Halfords Racing with Cataclean	Honda Civic Type-R	18	11.136	1:09.793	2
7	123	I		Daniel LLOYD	Adrian Flux with Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall Astra	18	13.260	1:09.776	7
8	1	I		Ashley SUTTON	Laser Tools Racing	Infiniti Q50	18	13.594	1:09.846	8
9	12	M		Stephen JELLEY	Team BMW	BMW 330i M Sport	18	18.258	1:09.944	13
10	80	I		Tom INGRAM	Ginsters EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	18	19.615	1:10.275	10
11	48	M		Ollie JACKSON	MB Motorsport accelerated by Blue Square	Ford Focus ST	18	20.201	1:10.296	14
12	40	I		Árón TAYLOR-SMITH	Team HARD. with HUB Financial Solutions	CUPRA Leon	18	22.557	1:10.362	17
13	52	I		Gordon SHEDDEN	Halfords Racing with Cataclean	Honda Civic Type-R	18	24.079	1:10.199	11
14	31	I		Jack GOFF	Team HARD. with Autobrite Direct	CUPRA Leon	18	24.251	1:10.195	15
15	11	I		Jason PLATO	Adrian Flux with Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall Astra	18	24.651	1:09.896	18
16	22	I		Chris SMILEY	Ginsters EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	18	25.309	1:10.080	12
17	41	I		Carl BOARDLEY	Laser Tools Racing	Infiniti Q50	18	25.679	1:10.590	23
18	3	I		Tom CHILTON	Car Gods with Ciceley Motorsport	BMW 330i M Sport	18	25.887	1:10.241	20
19	4	M		Sam OSBORNE	Racing with Wera & Photon Group	Ford Focus ST	18	26.533	1:10.166	16
20	15	M		Tom OLIPHANT	Team BMW	BMW 330i M Sport	18	27.104	1:10.603	24
21	19	I		Jack MITCHELL	Team HARD. with Autobrite Direct	CUPRA Leon	18	28.928	1:10.317	19
22	62	I		Rick PARFITT Jr	EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	18	29.252	1:10.254	27
23	44	M		Andy NEATE	Racing with Wera & Photon Group	Ford Focus ST	18	33.338	1:10.593	26
24	28	I		Nicolas HAMILTON	ROKiT Racing with iQuoto Online Trading	CUPRA Leon	18	41.519	1:11.085	28
25	33	I		Adam MORGAN	Car Gods with Ciceley Motorsport	BMW 330i M Sport	18	47.549	1:09.812	29
26	99	I		Jade EDWARDS	PHSC with BTC Racing	Honda Civic Type-R	16	+ 2 LAPS	1:10.407	21
R	18	I		Senna PROCTOR	BTC Racing	Honda Civic Type-R	12	DNF	1:09.792	6
R	23	M		Sam SMELT	Toyota Gazoo Racing UK	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	0	DNF	N/A	22
R	96	I		Jack BUTEL	EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	0	DNF	N/A	25