Team BMW’s Colin Turkington stormed to his third win of the season at Croft to close in on the lead of the British Touring Car Championship
The four-time champion’s 59th career win was also his 13th at the North-East circuit, further cementing his status as the BTCC’s King of Croft in his BMW 330i M Sport.
Not only that, but it made the 700th BTCC race for WSR, who are responsible for the design, build and running of the BMWs, an incredibly memorable one.
“It’s very good to win again with Colin, and to mark our 700th race in the BTCC with a victory,” commented Team Principal dick Bennetts. “We really needed that one to keep up the pressure in the championship and to maintain BMW’s lead in the Manufacturers’ points. He’s driven like we all know he can and scored enough points to pull a bit closer to the championship lead.
“Tom (Oliphant) and Stephen (Jelley) should both have had much better results today, but once again they’ve been victims of some very poor driving standards up and down the field. I can only hope that gets better at Silverstone.”
The Northern Irishman had began the day with a fourth-place finish and added seventh in Race Two – a masterful recovery after being shoved into the gravel at Turn One with just a handful of laps remaining.
Bad luck turned into good however as he was drawn on pole position for Race Three’s partially-reversed starting grid. He started strongly and drove away from the field to win by three seconds.
His results helped him climb two spots to third in the Drivers’ Championship; a reduced 35 points off the series lead.
BMW continue to lead the Manufacturers’ points by a healthy margin as they chase a record-breaking sixth straight title, while Team BMW remain third in the Teams’ standings.
Team-mates Stephen Jelley and Tom Oliphant both endured frustrating racedays.
Stephen, from Leicester, had made a strong start from 12th on the Race-One grid and was on course to finish ninth when he was forced wide on the penultimate lap and fell to 13th spot by the finish.
He redoubled his efforts to finish 10th in Race Two and was running in the same position early in Race Three when he was spun around at the Complex and fell to 18th. After that, a recovery to 14th and a pair of championship points, was a solid result.
After qualifying a strong sixth – less than two tenths from pole position – Tom was hit three times by the same car on the opening lap of Race One and then spun off the track by another just two corners later.
That dropped him to 29th and last, from which he climbed to 20th by the finish. Broken suspension – a legacy of a heavy kerb strike – put him out of Race Two.
The Leamington Spa-based driver performed brilliantly to score points for 13th in Race Three, in spite of starting 28th and having to drive through the gravel to avoid a multi-car incident at the start.
There is less than a week regroup at Silverstone for the eighth round of the series, where all three drivers will aim for big points hauls.
Drivers Championship Points
1/ Ash Sutton – 247 points
2/ Jake Hill – 218
3/ Colin Turkington – 212
4/ Josh Cook – 211
5/ Tom Ingram – 210
6/ Gordon Shedden – 165
TEAMS Points
1/ Laser Tools Racing – 413 points
2/ BTC Racing – 396
3/ Team BMW – 338
4/ Ginsters EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com – 312
5/ Halfords Racing with Cataclean – 307
6/ MB Motorsport accelerated by Blue Square – 272
MANUFACTURERS
1/ BMW – 612 points
2/ Ford – 533
3/ Toyota – 477
Comments