11 AUGUST: BTCC KNOCKHILL
After the sunshine of Croft, the BTCC roadshow went north of the border to the sunshine and rolling hills of Knockhill – arguably the most spectacular circuit on the calendar and one celebrating its golden anniversary.
Once again it was Colin Turkington who claimed pole and drove a faultless race to take a clean sweep of the points – for the win in race one., for pole, for leading the race and for fastest lap.
Behind him, fellow Cobra driver Josh Cook had started 5th on the grid and had moved to fourth by the first bend to get involved in a dramatic three-way fight for second place with Aron Taylor-Smith and Adam Morgan who was desperately trying to make it a BMW 1-2.
A dramatic side by side battle in the final laps saw Cook and Morgan enter the hairpin side by side with Cook bravely keeping his foot to the boards to claim a well-deserved second ahead of Morgan to deliver a 1-2-3 for drivers using Cobra seats, with fellow Cobra driver and Championship contender Jake Hill taking valuable points in 5th.
The big loser was Tom Ingram who started 15th on the grid and as he tried to gain ground made contact with fellow Cobra pilot Aiden Moffat, sustaining damage that resulted in his retirement.
In race two it was Hill on soft tyres who made the blistering start from 5th to 4th by the first bend and he then used his tyre advantage to power past Turkington into a first place that he was never in any danger of relinquishing. It gave Hill his 6th win of season.
While Cobra drivers took 1st with Hill, 3rd in the shape of Colin Turkington, 4th with Josh Cook and 6th with Adam Morgan, arguably the most significant performance by a driver using a Cobra seat was Ingram’s spirited drive from the back of the grid to tenth – not so much for the six Championship points that he earned in the race, but the fact that it put him in the draw for the reverse grid race to conclude the day.
Finally, good fortune shone on Ingram when the draw put him on the second row of the grid. It also put fellow Cobra driver Rob Huff on pole and – as you would expect from a former WTC champion - Huff didn’t need a second invitation, powering into a lead that he would hold on to for the rest of the race, with Ingram bravely edging into second place behind him
Behind Huff and Ingram there was a typical BTCC nine-way battle for 4th with Josh Cook having the most dramatic involvement in the scrap, being tagged by Adam Morgan, shooting across the grass to rejoin the circuit one bend later where he was again tagged and ended up broadsiding the tyre stack.
When the dust finally settled Hill crossed the line in 5th to give him a substantial points haul in the race for the Championship to cut Ingram’s lead in the Championship to just 3 points.
