Priaulx leads British BMW driver 1-2 at Brands Hatch

Andy Priaulx has won the second race at Brands Hatch ahead of reigning BTCC champion Colin Turkington, with SR-Sport’s Gabriele Tarquini finishing third in a incident packed race.

Action took place from the start, as Augusto Farfus powered through from row two to take the lead ahead of his BMW Team RBM team mate and Chevrolet’s Alain Menu.

Elsewhere on the first lap, Fredy Barth and Kristian Poulsen made contact, causing terminal damage to both cars after Poulsen was fired off into the barrier on the straight – whilst Tiago Monteiro was knocked wide by Norbert Michelisz later on the lap and was thrown back on to the track hitting team mate Jordi Gené. Monteiro retired at the end of the lap, whilst Gené went on a recovery drive.

On the third lap, Priaulx dived down the inside of team mate Farfus for the lead at Druids and took the position – Alain Menu tried to follow through, but the two made contact, spinning the rear-wheel drive BMW around. Menu also suffered damage to his car which saw him return to the pits and retire.

This escalated the EBay Motors BMW of Colin Turkington up to second, and the SR-Sport SEAT León of Gabriele Tarquini to third, where they would remain for the rest of the race.

Rob Huff later gave his place away to team mate Yvan Muller, which moved the championship leader up to fifth behind Tom Coronel on the track. Muller would later attempt to pass Coronel, but after experiencing a massive slide, eventually settled down to finish fifth.

The independents category was quite active from second place backwards (as independent leader Colin Turkington was far ahead of his competitors) – with Tom Boardman fighting off Franz Engstler and Mehdi Bennani for a large part of the race, whilst a recovering Farfus attempted to pass. On lap 9, Bennani spun Engstler around, allowing Farfus through – no sooner was an investigation ordered, Bennani then took out bamboo-engineering’s Darryl O’Young at Druids.

With both cars stuck in the gravel, the race was again interrupted by a safety car. The last part of the race was fairly stable, with only Farfus making progress, eventually recovering to finish in eighth place after passing Michael Nykjaer on the penultimate lap.

The independents win was taken by Colin Turkington, whilst Proteam made the best of a troubling weekend for the team, with Stefano D’Aste and Sergio Hernandez finishing 2nd and 3rd, as incidents befell the rest of their class competitors.

Muller extends his championship lead fractionally, whilst Colin Turkington is now only 12 points behind Hernandez in the class.