Photo: PSP Images

Neal wins third race of the day at Donington Park

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Matt Neal won the third race of the day to reclaim second place in the drivers’ championship, heading to the season finale at Brands Hatch.

Andrew Jordan started from pole position, with the reverse grid flipping the top nine from race two, and held on to his lead for four laps, before oversteering heavily at Redgate on lap five allowing Matt Neal through, and again two corners later at the old Hairpin allowing the West Surrey Racing BMW of Rob Collard through into second.

Jason Plato, who had started seventh, made steady progress, passing Tom Chilton at the start, and passing the Airwaves BMW of Steven Kane for fifth on lap four.

Gordon Shedden got past the Focus of Tom Onslow-Cole for eighth on lap eight, who appeared be struggling on full ballast. Onslow-Cole would go on to finish ninth, after surviving contact with Alex MacDowall on lap ten, when MacDowall moved ahead of the Team Aon driver but turned in too early, and ended up off the track in into the tyre wall.

On lap nine, Mat Jackson dropped out of fourth place running wide off the circuit, and would recover to finish eighth.

The last part of the race was relatively quiet as far as today’s races have gone, the last key move was Jason Plato getting past Andrew Jordan for third, the Pirtek Racing driver fought hard to hold on to the position – but ran wide and fell back to seventh place, the battle with Jason put the Chevrolet driver under threat from Steven Kane, but Plato won out and went on to claim the final step on the podium.

The championship is now a four way fight, with Jason Plato leading the championship with 224 points, with Matt Neal back in second place 17 points behind, and Honda Racing Team teammate Gordon Shedden a further four points back.

Tom Onslow-Cole is in fourth place in the standings, 24 points adrift, whilst the other Team Aon car of Tom Chilton is now mathematically out of the championship, 53 points behind with only 52 points to be had at the season finale at Brands Hatch in three weeks time.