James Nash assumes title lead for Triple Eight

James Nash has taken the lead of the British Touring Car Championship in an incident packed race day, though the Triple Eight driver also picked up penalties.

The 25-year-old took the championship lead at the end of the final race after another consistent weekend, with three podium finishes in an eventful day at Donington Park.

The Triple Eight driver is still chasing his first win, but as a result of his strong run of results in the first two meetings of the year, he has a four point lead from Honda’s Matt Neal.

“As we said, slowly slowly, the win will come when it comes,” said Nash to TouringCarTimes.

Nash was involved in an incident in race three, which saw him make contact with Mat Jackson and Tom Chilton. The end result saw Chilton and Tom Onslow-Cole out of the race, and Collard back to the pits with damage.

Nash had lost ground in the incident but recovered to third, but was deemed to have caused the crash and was endorsed two points on his racing licence.

“I was just getting pushed and shoved, when you’re running so closely to other people that also means you’re pushing and shoving other people. Unfortunately someone got turned, I think it was Chilton.”

“It could have been a lot worse, but it could have been a lot better for me.”

Nash will go to Thruxton next, where he will run with 45kg of ballast for the first time in his career. This will also be his first race at Thruxton after missing the event when it hosted the first round of the 2010 season, but where the Vauxhall took two wins, then in the hands of Giovanardi.