WSR and BMW remain ahead in the battle for the British Touring Car Championship thanks to a double-podium finish on a hard day of racing at the UK’s fastest circuit, Thruxton.
Drivers’ Championship leader Colin Turkington and Stephen Jelley finished second and third in the last race of the day in their hybrid BMW 330e M Sports to keep Team BMW ahead in the race for the Teams’ crown.
“We’ll leave Thruxton happy,” commented Dick Bennetts, Team Principal. “It’s a front-wheel-drive circuit and we’ve come away with a couple of podiums and still leading all the championships.
“Having very good reliability with nine points finishes out of nine is exactly what we’d want, and Jake’s done very well to have the only rear-wheel-drive car in a sea of front-wheel-drives.
“The team’s worked very hard to make all three BMWs progressively better as the day’s gone on and we’ve seen the impact of that with the points we’ve scored and ultimately our winning Manufacturers’ score in the last race. We have two rounds left and we have everything to play for.”
There was also a pair of fourth-place finishes for ROKiT MB Motorsport’s Jake Hill, ensuring that with two triple-header events of the 2022 season remaining, he left Thruxton closer to the points lead than he had been at the start of the day.
After a tough qualifying session, both Colin and Stephen made excellent progress in Race One from 15th and 16th spots on the grid.
Northern Irishman Colin carefully picked off his rivals one by one to rise to 10th spot by the finish with Leicester ace Stephen right behind; results they repeated in Race Two.
But it was the partially-reversed third race – for which Stephen was drawn on pole position with Colin alongside – when both drivers’ fortunes picked up considerably.
Running in the top three throughout the race, four-time champion Colin finished second to record his 11th podium of the season and leave Thruxton with a six-point championship lead.
Stephen’s third place was the first Thruxton podium of his BTCC career and elevated him into a tie for eighth place in the standings – the highest he’s been in 2022. It also helped strengthen BMW’s lead in the Manufacturers’ title race.
Significantly, only twice in the team’s 26-year BTCC history has WSR scored more podium finishes in a single season than the 22 that have been achieved in 2022.
It was ROKiT MB Motorsport driver Jake who had been the quickest WSR racer – and the best placed driver of a rear-wheel-drive car in qualifying. The Kent racer started the opener from third and finished fourth after a strong drive aboard his 3 Series.
A repeat result in Race Two brought him to within 10 points of the series lead, but an off-track excursion on the opening lap of Race Three – caused when he was squeezed off at Segrave by a rival – dropped him from seventh to 16th.
From there he recovered well to climb to 12th by the chequered flag; a result that puts him fourth in the standings – 23 points away from the series lead with six races to go.
The penultimate triple-header weekend of the season takes place at Silverstone on September 24-25.
Standings
DRIVERS
1/ Colin Turkington – 311 points
2/ Ash Sutton – 305
3/ Tom Ingram – 293
4/ Jake Hill – 288
5/ Josh Cook – 243
6/ Rory Butcher – 218
8=. Stephen Jelley – 155
MANUFATURERS
1/ BMW – 654 points
2/ Ford – 576
3/ Hyundai – 545
4/ Honda 462
5/ Toyota – 422
TEAMS
1/ Team BMW – 457 points
2/ Napa Racing UK – 453
3/ Bristol Street Motors with EXCELR8 Tradepricecars.com – 422
4/ Halfords Racing with Cataclean – 351
5/ Rich Energy BTC Racing – 308
6/ ROKiT MB Motorsport – 280
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