Rob Collard leads BMW top three in climactic final race at Oulton Park
Rob Collard has led a West Surrey Racing 1-2-3 in the final race of the weekend at Oulton Park, with team-mate Colin Turkington extending his lead of the championship after fighting his way from seventh to third.
The race started dramatically with a five-car crash involving the Team Hard Volkswagen of Mike Bushell, the AmD Tuning MG of Rory Butcher and the Ciceley Mercedes of Tom Oliphant, with the two BTC Racing Hondas of Chris Smiley and Dan Lloyd.
With the five cars strewn across the start-finish straight and with Butcher and Lloyd’s cars both having made heavy contact with the barriers, the race was red-flagged, with a full restart ordered.
After a 25-minute break, the race was restarted, with Rob Collard reproducing the same start from the outside of the front row as the first start, passing the pole sitting Alfa Romeo Giulietta of Rob Austin into the lead at Old Hall Corner.
Colin Turkington was again on a charge, with the Race 2 winner working his way forward despite carrying 75kg of ballast, passing Tom Chilton’s Motorbase Ford Focus at Lodge at the end of lap two for fifth, with the Eurotech Honda riding his tail and making his way past Chilton’s car at the next corner at Old Hall.
Turkington and Goff repeated the same set of moves on James Cole’s Ford on lap six, with Turkington now up to fourth position.
That fourth would become third when Rob Austin’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta slowed out of second and came into the pits with a technical problem, promoting the Pirtek-backed BMW of Andrew Jordan to second.
Collard went on to win the shortened race by four seconds over Jordan, with Turkington third.
Jack Goff completed a successful points-scoring weekend in his Eurotech Honda with fourth, while former championship leader Adam Morgan made his way up to fifth in the Ciceley Mercedes, finishing ahead of the Speedworks Toyota of Tom Ingram, who made his way past Cole’s Ford on the final lap at Old Hall, with the two making contact and Cole dropping to tenth.
Tom Chilton finished seventh ahead of the two Team Hard Volkswagens of Mike Bushell and Jake Hill.
Reigning champion Ashley Sutton finished 13th in his Team BMR Subaru Levorg, his best result of the day, while Team Dynamics’ Matt Neal finished 14th after being forced off track in an incident with Ingram on lap seven.
Turkington leads the championship on 124 points, 12 points clear of Adam Morgan and Jack Goff who are tied in second, with Tom Ingram 21 points adrift, and Josh Cook rescuing an 11th place finish in Race 3 to add to his tally and leave 24 points behind, two ahead of three-time champion Matt Neal.
The next round of the championship takes place at Croft in two weeks’ time.
